Jharkhand woman, 4 sons die of Covid in 14 days

DHANBAD: A prominent business family from Dhanbad has been ravaged by the novel coronavirus, with the matriarch — an 89-year-old woman — and her four sons succumbing to the disease in 14 days. A fifth son lost his battle with cancer in the same period.
Of the woman’s seven children, only two survive — the youngest son, who stayed back in Delhi, and a daughter settled in Kolkata. A distant relative of the family said, "Nobody in Dhanbad ever dreamt that an entire family, settled in different parts of the country, would be wiped out by the virus. Death has probably reunited them all in heaven."
The last death in the family took place before dawn on Monday when the woman’s 71-year-old son, admitted to the ICU at Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Science (Rims) with Covid-19, collapsed in the hospital toilet. No one at the hospital realised he was missing from his bed and the body lay in the washroom unattended for more than two hours. The woman and one of her sons had shifted to Delhi years ago and she visited Dhanbad after many years for a wedding in their extended family on June 27.
However, she fell ill the evening before the marriage ceremony and was admitted to a private hospital in Chas, in adjoining Bokaro district. She died at the hospital on July 4 and was cremated as per Hindu rituals as her Covid-positive report arrived only three days later.
On July 8, her 69-year-old son, who too had comorbidities, tested positive for the new virus and was admitted to a hospital in Dhanbad. He died on July 11, hours before his 65-year-old brother was taken from a hotel-turned-quarantine centre and admitted to Patliputra Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), Dhanbad, after complaining of chest pain. He died in the early hours of July 12 and tested positive for Covid-19 a day later. The same evening, the woman’s 72-year-old son died at the same hospital after testing positive for the virus.
The three men were cremated by the district authorities in compliance with pandemic norms on July 13 as protests erupted in the area as locals feared the funeral would spread the virus in their neighbourhood. The body of the man who died on July 16 is still lying at the PMCH mortuary awaiting cremation.
The family’s misery, though, was far from over. On July 19, the woman’s 60-year-old son, who was battling lung cancer, died at Tata Main Hospital in Jamshedpur three days after he was admitted. His body tested negative for the virus. On Monday night, her 71-year-old son died in the hospital’s toilet.