Twenty-four-year-old Sudhanshu Shrestha, who works at a bank in Bihar’s Gopalganj town, phoned his manager on the morning of July 13. He wa...
Twenty-four-year-old Sudhanshu Shrestha, who works at a bank in Bihar’s Gopalganj town, phoned his manager on the morning of July 13. He wanted the day off. He had been running a temperature since the previous week. The paracetamol tablets he had been popping had stopped working and his condition had deteriorated over the weekend. He had thrown up several times and could barely get up from his bed.
The manager’s response confirmed Shrestha’s worst fears. He said he was ill too. So were several other employees at the branch. All of them had the same symptoms: a fever, a dry cough getting worse by the minute and debilitating weakness.
It was decided that the bank would keep its shutters closed for the day and all eight employees would instead go to the Gopalganj Civil Hospital to get tested for Covid-19.
A long wait (and self-medication)
This is when, the banker recalled, the horror began.
The civil hospital authorities told Shrestha and his colleagues that they had already done their daily quota of 75 tests. They suggested the group try the private hospital in the town that was also testing.
The same story played out at the private hospital: they were told it had already collected its daily quota of 50 samples. “We...
