A sixty-eight-year-old man, who is one of Moruca’s earliest recovered COVID-19 cases, has said the stigma he suffered after his diagnosis did more harm than the virus itself.
The man, who asked not to be named due to the rumours already spread by persons within his community, was asymptomatic.
He had travelled to Georgetown in early of April to visit a relative and returned to Moruca in the middle of the month. It was not until two weeks later that the Kumaka District Hospital contacted him to inform him that his relative had contracted the virus and he was listed as one of the persons the man had come into contact with. He was then requested by the hospital to go into quarantine for 21 days.
According to the pensioner, it was not until after three weeks into his self- quarantine that a team of medical personnel showed up at his residence to have him tested. When the results came back as positive, he was put into an isolation facility.
The man said that because he was one of the first cases in the area, he was the only one at the facility. Meals, he noted, were healthy. While he shared that he was cared for properly, he complained of the lengthy time doctors took to have him tested and isolated. He stayed for two weeks at the facility before he was re-tested twice and found to be negative on both occasions. He was subsequently discharged from the facility.
He noted that all the while he was in quarantine and also when he was kept in the isolation facility, negative things were said about him by several of those who know him.
Although he did not say what these rumours were for fear of revealing his identity, the man did say that he and his family were discriminated against and remarked that everything that was said was not the truth.
He also stressed, “I did not have a fever, shortness of breath, a cough, headaches or any of the symptoms that comes with COVID. I’m a person who rarely gets sick.”
He pointed out that while he had tested positive, other members of his family and other relatives he came into contact with tested negative.
The man also noted that he learnt that health officials did not take the necessary actions to have him tested and/or isolated as quickly as possible as they should have until they were pressed to do so by the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).
The elderly man further shared with Stabroek News that for the weeks after returning home prior to learning that he was in contact with someone who had contracted the virus, he was unaware that he could also be a carrier of the virus as he did not fall ill nor showed any symptoms of COVID. “They (Kumaka District Hospital) put me on quarantine to see maybe if I’ll get the symptoms but that was more than three weeks before they decided to test me. I think Georgetown was behind the people here to test me and then they eventually tested me and it said I was positive. The other person I was believed to have contracted the virus from, they had symptoms,” the man noted.
It has been about a month since his recovery and since then he has seen the number of COVID-19 infections in Moruca skyrocket.
“It is my understanding that people protested in Moruca [last Tuesday] about the virus being here. I find it ironic that some of the people who protested have relatives who are in quarantine and in isolation. I don’t know why they are making this [health crisis] a political one. I feel that these people are misinformed or [blatantly] refuse to adhere to advice and do not care about social distancing or wearing their masks. It’s a hard thing to get people to adhere to social distancing here,” he said.
