A view inside the Chhawla quarantine camp, as in the first week of February 2020, housing evacuees from Wuhan who returned to India on the second flight. Photo: Sahil Shandilya.
New Delhi: When the residents of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) quarantine camp at Chhawla in Delhi woke up this morning, they received news that a group of 15 Italian tourists who had been admitted to the same camp on March 3 had tested positive for the SARC-CoV-2 coronavirus. The other residents of the camp are now increasingly anxious for their safety since the Italian nationals also housed in the same building.
Gaurav Shukla, who is pursuing a post-doctoral fellowship in Wuhan, said they heard about the test results on the news. “Nobody from the authorities came to tell us anything,” he told The Wire.
He is one of 75 Indians undergoing compulsory quarantine since they returned from Wuhan on the third evacuation flight on February 27.
India has set up two quarantine camps, one run by the Indian army and the other by the ITBP. The Indian and foreign nationals on the first two flights out of Wuhan that the Indian government had organised have already completed their two-week quarantine period and are now in self-quarantine at their homes.
The 75 still at the camp became suspicious after unusual activity at the camp on Tuesday night, when ITBP personnel suddenly became stricter about using face masks. “The Italians have been lodged on the third floor and we are all staying on the fifth floor,” Ashish Yadav, a professor at Wuhan Textile University, said. “There is strict segregation as we can’t move out from [our] rooms, but we are still worried. The cleaners of the entire building are the same and they are moving up and down, so you never know.”
During the quarantine period, doctors at the camp regularly check all residents for signs of an infection, such as flu-like symptoms and fever, but Yadav said no tests were conducted on March 4, at least not yet. “Usually, the doctors come for the check-ups by 9:30 am, but it’s already afternoon and nobody has come yet.”
Another Indian resident named Abhishek Malik said there should be more transparency about the status of the Italians. “There should be some clarity on what has happened and what should be done,” he said, adding that doctors should also conduct check-ups more frequently. “In China, they were taking our temperature more than three times a day since body temperature fluctuates throughout the day. Here they do it only once.”
“Maybe we were better off in Wuhan,” a restaurant worker named Dharmender Singh said. Singh is especially concerned about the availability of adequate personal protection. “There are so many mosquitoes around. I don’t know how [the coronavirus] spreads but if there was there was proper cleaning, we should not have mosquitoes.”
He was also anxious that the quality of the masks the ITBP facility had provided was not particularly high. Additionally, other residents have also complained that the quality of the food at the camp isn’t very good. “We are getting oily food everyday, from breakfast. We can’t do any exercise, all the balcony doors have been shut and going outside is prohibited,” Neha Yadav, Ashish’s wife, said. “Many people have had their blood pressure shoot up and had to be rushed to hospital.”