Son of the 76-year-old Karnataka man, who became the first fatality of COVID-19 in India, has contradicted the claim of the health department, saying that "no one spoke the word coronavirus" until it was too late. The 51-year-old son of the Kalburgi man said that he has a lot of questions about his father's death, which the Karnataka Health Department has not answered. He said that no one said the world coronavirus when they took his father to the hospital.
"My family members and little children were there to see their grandfather when he was sick. Why would I put the health of my family at risk," he was quoted as saying by The News Minute.
On Thursday, the Karnataka government had said that the 76-year-old man from Kalaburgi who died on Tuesday was infected by the coronavirus and that they were trying to trace those who had been in close contact with him. The man had a travel history to Mecca in Saudi Arabia and he had landed at the Hyderabad airport on February 29.
Karnataka Health Department says family went against their advice
On March 6, he fell ill and was attended by a family doctor. However, his health condition worsened on March 8 and his family shifted him to a hospital in the Kalaburgi. The Karnataka Health Department has accused the family of going against their advice to keep him in an isolation ward and instead, took him to a hospital in Hyderabad.
However, his son claims that the doctors never informed him that his father could be infected by the COVID-19 novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 5,000 people and infected over 1.3 lakh across the world. The son said that his father had existing health problems and they thought he fell sick due to that.
"Since March 9, when my sister, brother-in-law and I took my father to SUnrise Hospital (in Kulburgi), no one said the word coronavirus. he already had health problems and so we thought it was something related to that. It was only after we brought him back to Gulbarga Institute of Medical Sciences in Kalaburgi that I realised he could have been infected. We did tell the doctors that he had travelled to Saudi Arabia," the said added.
Following his father's death due to coronavirus, the entire family has been shifted to one ward at the ESI Hospital in Kalaburgi, where he alleged, facilities are not adequate. While they are being served food and water, he said, the ward was "dirty and unhygienic".
