MC workers in Bapu Dham Colony on Monday. Express photo by Kamleshwar Singh.

A 60-year-old man from Bapu Dham Colony succumbed to Covid-19 on Monday. He is the sixth person in the UT to have died of the virus. Admitted to GMSH-16 on Friday night, he tested positive posthumously.

His wife, who was the only family member living with him in their flat, said her husband had been increasingly dependent on marijuana and tobacco for the past three months.

“We had been staying locked in all the time, with only each other for company. Moreover, he lost his job and all our savings are exhausted. He was in a bad state which just kept getting worse by each passing day,” says his 60-year-old wife, who has been admitted to GMSH-16 for Covid-19 sampling, along with three other family contacts of the now deceased man.

 

An official from the hospital explains that the man had a “smoker’s lung” and also had hypertension, which worsened the manifestation of the disease in his body, leading to his death. The man’s wife explains that her husband had fever since June 6 and was coughing out blackened phlegm incessantly, but she thought his symptoms will pass as they usually did.

“Since he smoked so much, he did have bad lungs, but we did not know he had blood pressure, he was not being medicated for that. In fact, I was on treatment for my blood pressure. He did not have any such problem until now,” explains the 60-year-old woman. The woman adds that the only time her husband did leave the house was when he went over to collect her medicines from local officials.

“The police used to bring the medicine for us, so he used to just go down to collect those. Otherwise he was locked up in the house all the time,” says the woman.

On Friday night, the man’s condition worsened when he complained of severe leg pain, and his wife called in a volunteer from the colony for help. “When I went over to their house to help, the man’s legs seemed paralysed and he was unable to move. His wife, she already had a condition and it was difficult for her to walk, so we carried both of them in stretchers to the hospital,” says Shiv Thakur, a resident from the colony who is a part of the volunteer team constituted to help locals in the containment zone.

Thakur has been quarantined as well, as a contact of the patient.

“I thought life could not get any worse, staying cooped up with nothing but financial stress to occupy our minds, but I was wrong,” says the deceased’s wife. The 60-year-old had been working as a lorry driver in the mandi, transporting vegetables until the lockdown was imposed. He had been without a livelihood since the lockdown, like most others in the containment zone.

“We had used up the savings we had at home and could not withdraw whatever little money we had in the bank. I borrowed some money from my brother but that also got exhausted soon. All we had was the ration that the government gave. Nothing else to look forward to in the day,” says the woman, who claims that they could not even visit one of her sons who lived in another phase of Bapu Dham Colony.

“There was no break in routine, it was like we were waiting to die in that house. He became so unresponsive by the end of it,” adds the woman.

The counsellor for Bapu Dham colony, Dalip Sharma says that the malaise and depression felt by the elderly couple was a feeling shared among most residents in the colony. “Imagine living in a tiny room with no way to pass your time and nowhere else to escape to, of course you will feel frustrated and depressed. On top of that, these people are uncertain about their future and have no form of financial security,” he adds.

4 more test positive

Apart from the 60-year-old Bapu Dham colony resident who passed away on Sunday, four city residents tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Monday. The tally of Covid-19 patients in the UT is 357 at present. Since six patients were also discharged on Monday, there are 50 active cases in the city.

A 65-year-old woman from Bapu Dham Colony, unrelated to the patient who passed away on Sunday, tested positive. The woman has six family contacts, all of whom have been sampled for the disease.

Two Khudda Jassu residents, a 32-year-old man and a 32 year old woman, also tested positive. The two patients are family contacts of an already diagnosed patient from the locality.

A 30-year-old pregnant woman from Sector 52 also tested positive. She was diagnosed with the disease at Kharar Hospital and is due to deliver within the next week. She has seven family contacts.