Losing family due to this ‘pandemic of negligence’ : Corona Chronicle #061
Hisfather came home and suddenly started showing symptoms for COVID-19.
He got really tensed and asked him to get tested for the same.
His test came in positive and that made his doubt stronger that everyone in the house may be infected.
His mother and his grandmother also tested positive and somehow he managed to be negative.
They were both put up in a government school which was a designated COVID-19 facility.
They were then put up at the government hospital.
His mother was very weak and she had to get up to go to the washroom.
While she was trying to reach the washroom, she collapsed due to the weakness.
She lay there for 2 hours straight without any help when another patient helped her back to her bed.
She told his incident to her son who was hardly shocked about the treatment with his mother.
When his mother’s condition worsened, she was shifted to the Jalgaon Civil Hospital.
She waited there for 6 hours for an ICU bed in the waiting room and lost her life during the wait.
Their lives were like it came to a stop but he had 2 more people to take care of.
On June 1st, his grandmother also started suffering from weakness and was shifted to the Jalgaon Civil Hospital.
She was put up in the ward meant for suspected corona cases while she was tested positive for the virus.
The next day, he called the hospital with a hope of hearing that his grandmother was recovering.
Instead he got the shock of his life.
The ward boy told him that his grandmother was “missing”.
The hospital kept on insisting that “she just walked away”.
On June 4th, he received a call from a doctor at the hospital saying that his grandmother was found and perfectly stable.
He was unconvinced by the call and went to the hospital, showed an image of his grandmother to the nurse who told him that she was still missing.
He straight went to the police filing a missing complaint.
Police officials checked the wards and corridors but didn’t find his grandmother.
He told them to check the washrooms due to the incident with his mother but the police did not check.
A few days later, the patients in the ward started complaining about a stench in the area.
One day, they could not bear it and asked the staffers to check it.
When the staffers opened the door, the found a partially decomposed body of his grandmother as it was there for 8 days.
His father is recovering from COVID-19 in a private hospital in Nashik.
Five officials have been suspended from the government hospital.
He says that they could afford treatment in a private hospital but the rules did not allow COVID-19 patients to be admitted.
He lost his mother and his grandmother due to this ‘pandemic of negligence’.
Disclaimer: Based on true events.
– Tanisha Agrawal
