One yr on, LNJP corona warriors recall challenges

New Delhi, Feb. 28: At state-run LNJP Hospital, the nerve centre of Delhi’s battle against the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, many doctors at times had to wear PPE kits for nearly 18 hours to attend to struggling patients in the sweltering heat when its first wave had hit the city and the mortuary was piled up with bodies.

It’s been one year since the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic in the national capital, and daily cases and death counts have both come down significantly, and scenes of distress in the hospital’s corridors and outside morgue have been replaced by talks about the ongoing vaccination.

It was on March 1 that the first case of Covid-19 was recorded in the city, a few months after the “unpredictable virus” had wreaked havoc in Wuhan in China, where it was first reported globally.

Rohit Datta, a businessman from east Delhi, who had returned from Italy last year, tested positive for the new virus that had left the world puzzled and in a grip of extreme fear.

The world had not seen anything like this before since the Spanish Flu of 1918, and certainly not in India. As the cases began to spiral in large parts of the country, including Delhi, a nationwide lockdown was imposed late March by the government to contain the spread of the virus.

While most people were practically left confined to their houses for several months and work from home became the new normal,

healthcare workers faced the heavy brunt of the pandemic, as doctors, nurses, served patients day in and day out, without any weekly breaks, isolated from their family members for days, weeks or even months.

Amit Anand, a 35-yeardoctor at the 2,000-bed LNJP Hospital who has been on duty since the outbreak of the pandemic here, said, “It’s one year of Covid-19, and I also met

my family back home, after a gap of one year.”

The Begusarai native, whose wife also holds an MBBS degree, said, “I met my wife and son, now twoand-a-half years old, in Bokaro this February, and he almost didn’t recognise me. The pandemic literally separated us from our families. But we have to do our job, which we have chosen, so that motivated us throughout this very tough period.”