A man in an orange vest is lying on the ground – he is struggling to breathe. As he gasps for air, his distraught daughter tries to approach him with a bottle of water. But her mother tries to hold her back, fearing infection. The weeping daughter sprinkles and pours a little water into her father’s mouth, even as her fearful mother is pulling her back. In a heart-wrenching moment, the daughter is holding on to her father’s fingers, and it appears that he is too. The next moment though, he stops moving. His wife looks at him, and says, “gone”, after which the man’s daughter breaks down into wails and sobs, inconsolable.
A video captures this heart-breaking incident which happened on Monday at Koyyanapeta, in Jagannathavalasa Gram Panchayat of G Sigadam mandal in Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam district. Asiri Naidu, a daily wage worker, had recently reached home from Vijayawada after testing positive for the novel coronavirus. However, Asiri’s condition deteriorated due to lack of treatment. The residents reportedly asked the family to stay at the outskirts of the village, over COVID-19 fears. Even as Asiri’s health worsened, bystanders in the locality did not come forward to take him to hospital, afraid of contracting the infection.
The nearly two-minute video shows the helplessness of the man who died right in front of his family. He is survived by his wife and two children. According to the visuals, which were shown on ETV news, the family members had also tested positive for the virus.
When TNM reached out to the District Medical and Health Officer (DMHO), Dr M Chenchaiah, he said that the incident had not come to his notice, but that he would look into it. "We were not aware of the issue, we will inquire about it and let you know," said DMHO, stating that all the COVID-19 patients are being given treatment at respective hospitals.
Earlier, a man in Andhra Pradesh had to carry his dead mother's body on a bike for 18 kilometres as he did not find any ambulance or auto-rickshaw to take her to the cremation ground. The video footage from Andhra Pradesh's Palasa showed a man called Narendra riding the bike with his 50-year-old mother Chenchu’s body at his back, and a relative holding the body in place.
In Srikakulam district, six people have died in the last 24 hours as per the media bulletin released by state COVID-19 Command Control Room. There are as many as 1,707 active COVID-19 cases in the district, while the state has 1,51,852 active COVID-19 cases.