Delhi: In Covid’s wake, families struggle with loss, grief two years on

Several families in the Capital have similar stories of grief and loss as they battled Covid over the last two years.

Shashank Shekhar, the father of nine-month-old Krishu, who succumbed to Covid-19 infection in May last year, still carries a photo of his son in his wallet. He avoids conversations around the boy’s death “to avoid memories of his lifeless body wrapped in multiple layers of protective covers”.

People wait to refill empty oxygen cylinders, at Bhogal in New Delhi, on April 27, 2021. (Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

“My wife contracted the infection first and around a week later, my son started showing symptoms. We admitted him to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital and within a few hours, his blood oxygen levels dipped to 31,” Shekhar said.

Several families in the Capital have similar stories of grief and loss as they battled Covid over the last two years.

On March 2, 2020, Delhi reported its first case of Covid-19 infection after a businessman who had returned from Italy tested positive.

Subsequently, the infection was quick to spread across the city, with its worst impacts seen between April and July, 2021, fuelled by the Delta variant of Covid-19.

Delhi government data shows that till March 1 this year, the city reported 1,860,236 Covid cases in the Capital, taking the city’s cumulative positivity rate to 5.11%. Delhi has also reported 26,126 deaths due to the infection over the last two years, at a case fatality rate of 1.40%, according to government data.

People who suffered the worst of the pandemic, however, say that the overall numbers don’t reflect the damage on the ground.

Padma Shri awardee and former legislator Jitender Singh Shunty, who was at the forefront to manage cremations at Delhi’s Seemapuri crematorium, said the actual death toll was at least 100,000. At the Seemapuri crematorium alone, 42,000 Covid cremations were conducted since the Covid outbreak, he claimed.

“We were there on the ground and we saw how people waited in ambulances for days only for their turn to cremate the bodies of their family members. After the first Covid wave, the government in Delhi did nothing to improve its healthcare infrastructure, increase bed capacity or the oxygen supply in hospitals. When the second wave hit the city, we saw the worst of the pandemic. People were left to fend for themselves,” he said.

He added, “Like people remember the Partition and the Bhopal gas tragedy, people will remember the Covid second wave in Delhi for the next 200 years.”

Vallari Sharma (29), daughter of Arvind Kumar Sharma, a government school principal who succumbed to Covid on April 30, 2021, said that her family is waiting for financial assistance from the government.

“My father was the sole breadwinner of our family of four and he got infected on April 12. He passed away just three days after getting admitted to the hospital. We don’t know what the government criteria for compensation is but my father was working when he contracted the virus and we are hoping for some help. In fact, we started receiving his pension only 10 months after his death,” said Sharma.

The Delhi government has announced ₹1 crore compensation for frontline workers who succumb to Covid-19 in the city.

Meanwhile, government officials said they did their best to tackle the infection in the city.

“Our government has done a decent job in managing the pandemic, but that is not to say that people did not die of the infection. It is true that our healthcare infrastructure was stretched to its limit but we did our best. For a lot of it, we were also dependent on the Centre. We are among the few cities where vaccination rate is the highest,” said a senior health department official.

Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain’s office did not respond to queries seeking comments.

Health experts said the city has come a long way in its approach towards managing Covid.

“Both private players and the government have increased spending to improve healthcare infrastructure. Another lesson has been that people are also taking better care of their health now, primarily because we learned that a large share of people who died had co-morbidities,” said Dr Sandeep Dewan, director and HOD, Critical Care Medicine, Fortis Memorial Research Institute in Gurugram.