All Covid positive at home, parents send infant to Jabalpur

Nagpur: Covid-19 continues to throw up new challenges before administration, doctors and patients. A couple from a posh locality under Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) Mangalwari zone have to endure the pain of separation with their 10-month-old only son after they and three other relatives tested positive for coronavirus.
Left with no choice and only a few hours to take a call, the couple acted swiftly and decided to pack off the infant to his paternal grandparents home in Jabalpur, 276km from here, late Saturday night.
The infant was driven by his 40-year-old dad’s friend and wife. At the same time, the man’s elder brother and wife started from Jabalpur to take custody of their 10-month-old nephew midway at Seoni in Madhya Pradesh.
The family’s agony started when the infant’s 30-year-old mother complained of loss of smell and taste. As a precautionary measure, she got tested for Covid-19 at a private lab the same day. When her swab result tested positive the next day, the couple immediately shifted the infant to his maternal grandparents’ home in Central Nagpur.
On July 10, the 30-year-old positive woman’s husband, a businessman, her mother, brother and the infant’s throat swabs were collected for testing. The woman isolated herself at home requesting the NMC team to wait for the results of four others.
On July 11, the husband, his mother-in-law and brother-in-law too tested positive while the infant tested negative. The NMC team informed the family to make arrangement for the infant or submit an undertaking owning the responsibility of their son’s health.
Worried, the couple decided to shift the infant to Jabalpur as they had no other relative in city.
“My brother and his wife have isolated themselves in the upper floor with our son at their home in Jabalpur as per norms. Though the separation has come as a shock, it was a matter of his safety. No one is happy but we have no choice,” said the businessman, a native of Jabalpur.
Zonal medical officer Dr Ateequr Raheman Khan said the family has no travel history. “We are yet to get a clue about their infection source. They are first case from their colony to test positive for Covid-19,” he said.
In April, the son and daughter-in-law of city’s first Covid victim from Satranjipura were forced to keep their six-month-old daughter in GMCH Covid ward. The baby girl remained negative despite living with all positive patients for over 25 days.