In a tragic turn of events, a 50-year-old man from Bengaluru who had recently tested positive for COVID-19 took his own life on Monday morning. The man, who had been identified as P466, was admitted to Victoria Hospital for COVID-19 on Friday.
The man was a known contact of P465, a 45-year-old woman who had tested positive for the disease. He had been on temporary dialysis for chronic renal failure, which he last underwent on Saturday and was due to undergo again on Monday.
As the hospital was questioned how the man was able to leave an isolation ward, the government claimed that the man had climbed up through a fire exit which had been kept open for those repairing the elevator to traverse.
The man was a contact of a 45-year-old woman (identified as P465) who was categorised as having SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Infection). She had died at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases (RGICD) in Bengaluru on Sunday evening. She had tested positive on Friday for COVID-19.
Including patients 465 and 466, five people from Hampinagara in Bengaluru have tested positive for the virus.
Speaking to TNM, Ravikumar Surpur, Special Commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike stated that contact tracing was underway for those who had been in touch with the woman. He noted that the woman had first gone to a government healthcare facility on April 22, following which she went to Moodalapalya Maternity Hospital in West Bengaluru with complaints of dysfunctional uterine bleeding (DUB). A doctor who examined her at the hospital noticed that the woman was showing symptoms of SARI following which she was referred to Victoria Hospital. There, it was found that the woman had low blood oxygen levels and was admitted, and she was later transferred to RGICD. After the woman tested positive for COVID-19, the Moodalapalya Maternity Hospital was shut down, and staff were placed under quarantine as a precaution.
While there is no vaccine or definitive universal treatment for COVID-19, people can get better after getting infected with the virus. In fact, according to Worldometer, globally over 880,000 people out of 2,995,757 recovered (30%). India in particular has reported 6,523 people recovered out of 27,977 individuals who contracted COVID-19.