Gurugram’s patient zero recounts her time spent in isolation

Last week, she stepped out of home for the first time in two months. She had gone out for a walk with her best friend, her dog Champagne, after spending days in

Last week, she stepped out of home for the first time in two months. She had gone out for a walk with her best friend, her dog Champagne, after spending days in isolation at hospital and home. It felt blissful till she had to cut short the walk when she realised every passerby in her society was staring at her, as if they knew she was the first Covid-19 patient of Gurugram and Haryana.

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“Though I was wearing a mask, I felt people were scared of me,” says the 26-year-old, who requested anonymity.

“It affected me when the media reported that I had run away from the Civil Hospital. I had only been shifted to a private hospital after consultation with doctors. My contact details were leaked on WhatsApp groups. My parents and I got calls from unknown numbers. A man even posed as a policeman and entered our house. Nothing can be more traumatising,” she says, recalling the days after she tested positive.

A resident of Sector 9, the woman, Gurugram’s patient zero, works as a marketing professional with an IT company in the city. She says, “People lack empathy. Rather than being concerned about what I was going through after contracting a disease, neighbours were more concerned about their own well-being.”

She was so scared that she quarantined herself for a month at home after being discharged. “It was a conscious decision as my three-month-old nephew stays with us.” While in isolation, she relied on her mother who kept her strong mentally and physically. Today, she is back pursuing her hobbies of cooking, playing with her nephew and taking her dog out for a walk.

She understands that getting back to normalcy will take time. She is still to figure out how she contracted SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes coronavirus disease) . On February 22, she had gone for a vacation to Malaysia and Indonesia along with her cousin and returned on March 4. She had fever and cold on March 11 and got herself tested the next day only to be diagnosed positive on March 15.

“Now I ask everyone to wear a mask and practise hand hygiene because one never knows how one gets infected,” she says. The last two months have changed her, for the better. “I’m more patient and concerned about others struggling with the virus,” she says.