10 Italians recover, discharged from Medanta hospital

NEWDELHI: On Monday, 10 visibly happy Italians walked out of the isolation ward of Medanta hospital in Gurugram, about three weeks after they moved to the hospital from the ITBP Camp in Delhi where they were initially quarantined.

There were 14 of them in that group, and all tested positive for Covid-19.

One more member of the group was previously released; and three are still in Medanta, including one who is ill enough to require ventilator support.

“We had no symptoms at all. No fever or cough. No blood pressure problem. Only three of us did not feel good. Then we discovered that we were positive,” said 70-year-old Emilia Giuseppina Antoinette whose husband flew back to Italy after his tests came out negative.

Antoinette, the only one in her group to speak English, said there were several others like her who stayed behind without their spouse. “We understood that it was better for us to be here,” she said.

The group, all aged between 60 and 80 years, with a coordinator in her forties, arrived in India on February 20. Most of them did not know one another but had a desire to see India. Little did they know then that their country was bracing for a pandemic. Some of them were probably already infected, but no one knew it then.

“When we flew from there, we had no information about the virus. But on the very first that we were in India, we found out that it had been recognised in

Italy,” Antoinette said.

A friend with flu symptoms, she said, had refused to go to the doctor in Italy because he didn’t know about coronavirus at the time. “We were angry with our friend. And I am just sad to think that we brought it here...”

The Italians are now looking forward to going home but are not sure when will that be. “We don’t know. The embassy is trying to arrange a special flight for us,” Antoinette said. Many of them nodded when Antoinette said she wanted to fly back despite the situation in Italy.

They will have to wait till at least March 31. No international flights will take off from India till then.

“My husband was worried. But he felt reassured when I told him that we were being treated in a nice manner and the doctors here were competent. They gave us psychological support and that is important,” Antoinette said. The group posed for a photograph. With their masks off, they were all smiles.