If one went by the official account of India’s first COVID-19, it’s a case study on how the test that the public health system will be put to in the coming days as the number of cases rise.
Late Thursday night, the union health ministry confirmed the death of a 76-year-old man from Karnataka as one that was caused due to co-morbidity and COVID-19. The patient had visited Saudi Arabia from January 29, 2020, to February 29, 2020. He was a known case of hypertension and asthma. On February 29, he reached Hyderabad on and went to Kalaburgi.
Though the patient was asymptomatic on his return, five days later, he developed symptoms of fever and cough. A private doctor visited him at his home and treated him.
On March 9, however, the symptoms aggravated and he was shifted to a private hospital in Kalaburgi. “At this private hospital, he was provisionally diagnosed as “mid-zone Viral Pneumonia” and “suspected COVID-19”,” the ministry said in a statement.
On March 9, his sample was collected by Viral Research Diagnostic Laboratory, GIMS, Kalaburgi to rule out COVID-19, and the sample was dispatched to VRDL, BMC&RI, Bengaluru.
However, the ministry said that the patient’s attendees wanted to discharge him, without waiting for the results. “The patient was discharged against medical advice (DAMA) and the attendees took him to a private hospital in Hyderabad,” the ministry said.
As per the instructions of Deputy Commissioner, Kalaburgi district, the DHO met the attendees to convince them to admit the patient to the Gulbarga Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS), Kalaburgi in the isolation ward set up at the institute. “But the attendees refused to listen to him. They transferred him to Hyderabad without his knowledge,” officials said.
The patient was admitted at a private hospital in Hyderabad and treated. Later, he was discharged and while he was being brought back on March 10, he died on the way to the GIMS, Kalaburgi.
The centre and state officials have said that all the precautionary measures “as per protocol”, such as contact tracing, screening and home quarantine of the contacts have been initiated by the district health and family welfare department in Karnataka, and the situation was being monitored continuously.