A 23-year-old man, who committed suicide by jumping off the seventh floor of a Safdarjung Hospital building on March 18, where he was taken on suspicion of being infected with COVID-19, has tested negative for the virus.
The man was brought to the hospital by the airport authorities straight from the IGI Airport as a coronavirus suspect and was immediately put in the isolation ward.
The youth, who was a resident of Balachaur district in Punjab, had been living in Sydney for a year. He arrived in Delhi via an Air India flight and during the airport screening for covid-19, complained of headache. The authorities then decided to send him to Safdarjung Hospital for the test.
“The deceased was admitted at hospital today at 9 pm after returning from Sydney, Australia,” the Delhi Police had said in a statement.
However, his family in Punjab blamed the health officials of mistreating the suspected patients and their families. Speaking to Indian Express, his uncle Sukhdev Singh said, “We went to Safdarjung to get information about him but the hospital did not tell us anything, and after an hour there, a staff member told us he must have been taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital because his name was not on their list. We then went to RML hospital and after struggling for an hour, we got the same reply. Then we went back to Safdarjung hospital to get his whereabouts.”
Meanwhile, India’s coronavirus figure has jumped to 694 after 88 new cases were reported on Friday, the highest in India in a single day. The death toll due to COVID-19 also rose to 16.
In its updated figures, the ministry said that as of 8pm on Thursday, Gujarat and Maharashtra reported three deaths each, Karnataka reported two, and Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Punjab, Delhi, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir reported one death each.
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Source: News18