India’s COVID crisis: ‘I asked for help. My father was still dead | Coronavirus pandemic News

Lucknow, India – On April 14, Ashish Shrivastav, 39, joined a 70-year-old father who was complaining of shortness of breath in a small dwarf car and was taken to Vivekanand Hospital in Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh.

At the hospital, his father, Sushil Kumar, tested positive for COVID-19, but despite his age and vulnerability, the hospital told him he could not enter because there was no bed.

Ashish, who runs a private rehabilitation center for children with disabilities, said she asked doctors to admit her father, but was told to go to a government-run hospital.

So Ashish put his father back in the car, bought two five-liter oxygen caps and started looking for a hospital that would accept him.

“We kept … [the oxygen cylinders] after putting that oxygen mask on the back seat of the car and my dad’s nose, we went to the COVID center in the city’s Lalbagh area, hoping my dad could get in. I did the registration paperwork over the regular COVID phone, but the government hospitals and private individuals we tested also refused us.

“All the hospitals asked for a referral letter from the Chief Medical Officer (CMO). When I went to the CMO office, I had to wait. [because there were so many people there]. While I was waiting, the police deployed to the office forced me to leave the premises, ”Ashish says.

In the first fortnight of April, patients with positive COVID admitted to any hospital in Lucknow required a referral letter from the CMO office. To obtain this letter, it was mandatory for patients to show an RT-PCR test confirming COVID infection. But after a public outcry, the Uttar Pradesh government recently deleted the letter of reference.

Ashish says he tried many private and government health centers in Lucknow, but was denied by his father in each of them.

“I went everywhere as a beggar and also tried several other hospitals over the phone. Dad told me to take him home and he would be fine but I knew his condition was getting worse.

“We sent a column to send … my father to any hospital in Lucknow.”

At the time, Ashish says he had to fill his father’s oxygen cylinder twice to stay alive.

“We were finally admitted to a private clinic with the help of my medical friend after 36 hours.”

But it was too late. His father died on the morning of April 16th.

The next day, Ashish received a phone call from the COVID Command Control Center telling him that his father had been put to bed at Lucknow Hospital. He says it was kind of like hitting “with a dagger”.

“Two days before that date, saving my father could have made a big difference.”

Now, he says, “The death of the father is in the hands of those bureaucrats and politicians who are not concerned about the people, but are concerned about their parties and stakeholders. [over the phone]”.

Now, Ashish and his wife have tested positive and have entered into self-isolation.

“We don’t know what to do. Do I have to grieve for my father that I can’t save or do I have to take care of myself and my wife? I have no idea how to deal with the loss or how to deal with it, but if the government had the right interventions at the right time, maybe the situation of my family or thousands of families like us would be different, ”he says.

‘Imagination spreads at an unimaginable speed’

Due to COVID’s rising deaths, massive incineration and severe bed and oxygen shortages, they suggest that Uttar Pradesh is fast becoming the next COVID-19 point in India unless the government takes drastic measures to contain the virus.

Uttar Pradesh is one of the most populous states in India with a population of 200 million. Infections are on the rise in more than 22,000 cases every day.

The central government predicts that Uttar Pradesh will report more than 190,000 cases a day by the end of April. According to India’s COVID panel, the steady rise in COVID-19 cases is expected to take place by mid-May, reaching 500,000 a day and declining from June to July.

On April 28, the total number of accumulated cases in Uttar Pradesh was 300,041, with 11,943 people killed by COVID. In Lucknow, the cumulative number is 46,596 for a total of 1,726 deaths.

Harjit Singh Bhatti, a Delhi doctor and national chairman of the Forum of Medicine and Progressive Scientists (PMSF), who practices at a private hospital that has become a COVID facility, says: “It’s a health emergency. The condition of the wards is dire. Sometimes we have to put two people to bed because we need it.The courts exceed their capacity.Resources are limited and the number of patients arriving at hospitals is beyond imagination.

“We doctors feel sadness and peace at the same time, when a patient dies, because we are able to give a ventilator and oxygen to another patient who hopes to be saved through the help of the time. because it is spreading at an impossible speed. “