New Delhi, India’s capital, with a population of 20m, is being hit hard.
Smoke billowing from the burning corpses billowed through the air, and flames rose upward and into the dark clouds that obscured the sky. Overlooking from the sky, dozens of burning fires lay across the crematorium. They are rotating around the clock, making room for new bodies to arrive.
On May 1st India confirmed more than 400,000 cases in a single day, the highest number in a single day since the outbreak began. India’s single-day number of new cases has remained above 300,000 for 12 consecutive days. Recently, New Delhi’s Coronavirus positive rate reached a staggering 36%. A month ago, that was less than 3%.
This time, Nico, a Chinese at the center of India’s outbreak storm, witnessed New Delhi spiral out of control.
After testing positive for nucleic acid, she was refused admission by the hospital to carry out only a series of self-help activities, relying on willpower and colleagues of the drug delivery, alone through this special “treatment period.”
Here’s What Nico says:
blockade
I have been sent to New Delhi, India for almost three years. Previously, once every three months back to the country, change the visa to rest and then come over.
Because of the outbreak, there is no way to change visas, I this time in India for nearly a year and a half. I need to adapt to local life, but no matter how I adapt, or want to go home, or want to be with my parents, there is basically no one here to talk to you about Chinese.
The last time I went back to India was in December 2019, when the outbreak was not officially in the country. India’s side is partially cut off, and by February 2020 it will be all cut off from China.
China and India have not had direct flights, most of them choose to travel back to third-party countries, some to Nepal, some to Germany. But third-party countries have also announced a break with India, and no one can go back now.
Foreign couriers can’t mail into India, even if the mail comes by a lot of trips. Everything from China is checked at Indian customs. Friends from home to send Chinese herbal medicine to India, can not pass.
During the first wave of the outbreak, Modi’s government declared a nationwide blockade and asked everyone in the news to join the doctors at home to applaud. The area where I live is more in compliance with the requirements of the government, that night the community residents are standing on their balconies, beating gongs and drums in response to the call of the policy, I also followed the lively run to the balcony to applaud.
The second wave of outbreaks began in Maharashtra, the city-state where Mumbai is located, when the outbreak in New Delhi was not so severe.
In February, when the number of daily diagnoses in India was very low, everyone relaxed their guard and saw a lot of new couples getting married on the streets. New Delhi held a large-scale festival Huri Festival, we meet in the face of each other splashed, painted colorful powder, the street is very many people, we will also celebrate in the office.
Every Friday, a group of people go to the mosque to worship, but also to block the road, I have seen people directly on the road kneeling all the way to the temple gate. As a Chinese company, we still have strict anti-pandemic measures, requiring employees to wear masks in the office and to wear them during commutes.
There are a succession of Indian employees in the office. We felt the outbreak was a bit of a problem, shutting down the entire company in early April, two weeks before the New Delhi government announced the blockade, allowing everyone to stay home and do their own nucleic acid testing.
New Delhi’s government has given a temporary notice of a two-day blockade over the weekend and another week by Sunday night.
Delhi’s chief minister has announced a one-week extension of the blockade
New Delhi is India’s only city-state as a municipality directly under the central government. It is small in size, but has a high population density and a serious outbreak.
Before the city blockade, I gave all my living expenses to a colleague and asked him to hurry up and buy storage. There are no difficulties in food supplies in New Delhi, but we do not know how long it will take to seal off.
I think this outbreak is more serious than last year’s wave, it has been diagnosed a very large number of people, has broken through the number of single-day confirmed the world’s largest. Community management is also more stringent than before, do not allow outsiders to enter and leave. Residents dangled under the community building and wore masks. There are security guards in every building, and you’ll whistle when you’re not wearing a mask.
On April 25, I went out wearing an N95 mask to do nucleic acid testing, saw the subway station closed, the bus stopped, and all the merchants living in this area were closed. Before my door at the intersection of the car water Malone, there are clothes people sleeping in the street, parking at the intersection will be someone knocking on the window glass tube you want money.
Now only sporadic pedestrians, some do not wear masks, some wear their own cloth masks, no waterproof layer, melting spray cloth. The drugstores on the road were quarantined, separated like bank counters, and could only sell common cold medicine. You go to the pharmacy to buy vitamin C, and the boss puts a plate of medicine in a bag and hands it out through the curtain.
virus
I was infected between the end of March and the beginning of April.
On April 4th the nucleic acid test was negative, and on the 7th I began to have a fever, when the second wave of outbreaks began and the nucleic acid test report was slow.
At first is low fever, I have a lucky psychological guess is lung fever, suggesting that they did not recruit, believe that the efficacy of Chinese medicine against symptoms search scraping video, take scraping board to their own scraping.
Later, I developed a sore throat, ear pain, the most obvious symptom is that the nose can breathe, but no sense of smell, eat can not taste the food.
I use my mobile phone to check the symptoms of the Coronavirus, the more I look at myself more like, panic, online search for overseas Chinese wrote anti-pandemic diary to collect experience: others fever longer than me? Will it suddenly get better one day? I also looked through Professor Zhang Wenhong’s video to see how to deal with Coronavirus overseas.
Watching the number of confirmed cases on the news grow rapidly, I was even more frightened, having another nucleic acid test on the 9th and receiving an official report on the 11th that I had tested positive.
After I was diagnosed, my Indian friends around me started to get scared, and they thought the outbreak was no big deal. My father is about to be scared to death, several times a day to call me video, talk to me, worried that I am in a bad mood. I’m going to take comfort in my parents and tell them that I’m getting better and lessen their worries. Every night before going to bed, parents are videoed to report peace.
I burned for 10 days in a row, turning over all the expired medicineS I had brought in. In order to supplement protein, improve immunity, I keep pouring milk on myself, forcing myself to eat, no matter how disgusting to eat, rely on the body’s immunity to fight the virus.
The temperature of 30 degrees Celsius, I changed into a thick quilt to cover the sweat, wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning, the body is soaked with sweat, habitually take the temperature gun to take the temperature, and then take off the sweaty clothes washing machine wash to the balcony to dry. After getting up, I was all over the body, drinking water to deliver medicine and then continue to go back to bed, a day can drink 5 liters of water.
Sputum has been stuck in my throat, I will cough as soon as I speak, get up and spit will be breathless suffocation. The left half of the back, spine, arms are particularly painful, pain to want to cut off these parts to throw away. I can’t lie in bed and then go underground for a while, thinking about when I can not have a fever, a temperature of 37, 38 degrees Celsius, has been rising.
I lay at home for ten days because the CT value on my test report was less than 24 and it was contagious. Colleagues put the prepared meals at the door of my room every day, and I brought them in to eat myself.
The morning fever on the 13th reached more than 39 degrees Celsius. I called the hospital, but by then there was no way to get in.
My Indian colleagues around me can’t get in either, he’s a senior certified public accountant, a well-paid profession in India, and now you can’t get into the hospital, whether you have money or not.
An Indian friend told me that his cousin was lying in the hospital and advised me not to go in.
At first the hospital still had medicine, but now it’s not available, and there’s no pharmacy, like even the flower-clearing capsules that have been fried for hundreds of dollars on the black market in India.
Foreign
I dare not think of the problem of dying in other countries, tell myself must get through, suggest that I am recovering every day – today, another day, tomorrow will be fine.
Some residents in the community see that I will not take an elevator with me, but no one will deliberately make trouble because I am Chinese.
The community has Indian colleagues from the same company, through which I learned about the outside world, and he bought me medicine during my infection. I told him the symptoms and relayed them to the doctor, who asked him to deliver the medicine from the hospital to his door. Otherwise, what do you think I’m going to do with a Chinese?
India is a highly polarised country, with rich areas and slums probably just across the road.
There are a lot of Indians who don’t even have a chance to do nucleic acid testing, in India to do a nucleic acid test about 30$, but many people in India income is very low, simply can’t afford such expenses, they earn a daily salary, such as today to your home cleaning can only earn about 5$, earn a day’s money to eat a day’s food.
During the time I was infected, I was in a low mood, losing sleep every day and wanting to go home. Because of fear of friends worried, I have been afraid to send a circle of friends, only with parents, leaders and two good honey said that they diagnosed the Coronavirus.
Wake up that day to feel relaxed body, take a temperature gun to take a look at 36 degrees Celsius, I can’t believe, after half an hour and test, or not burn, and then two hours to test again, repeated several times, almost took the horn to the world announced.
I watched the news and said that deburning meant getting better, and I was super happy to video my dad saying I was finally not burning. Although still lying in bed can not sit up, sometimes coughing out yellow sputum, but I know that I finally survived.
On April 26th, my nucleic acid test report showed that I had changed from yang to yin, and I had tested positive for antibodies, and I packed up inside and outside my home, and finally pushed the door open and saw the night scene outside. Honey buried the fittest I said, the vaccine is to fight the inactivated virus, I am a live virus implant.
There is no way to return home now, because I was recently infected with non-compliance with the return policy, at least to stay in India for 14 days, then go to the hospital for lung CT and go to testing facilities to retest nucleic acids. Previously, the hotel does not accept Chinese stay, need to return to the compatriots will borrow my home, complete the nucleic acid test and then take a flight home.
After this matter I looked open, can go back to go back, can not go back is not in a hurry, to arrange other things for themselves to enrich life, life is only once.
I took out the hot pot bottom brought from home, and made an appointment with my colleagues to eat a hot pot for the weekend, to celebrate my good.
