The death of a 33-year old journalist working for a popular Telugu television news channel in Hyderabad due to Corona virus in Gandhi Hospital on Sunday morning created shockwaves in the media in the city.
According to sources, the journalist got himself tested along with other journalist colleagues for Covid-19 at Fever Hospital three days ago and there, he tested positive.
“He was admitted in Gandhi Hospital in the early hours of Thursday. Immediately treatment started. He developed breathlessness by afternoon on the same day of admission and shifted to Intensive Care Unit. Since then, he had been in ICU only. His oxygen saturation was not maintaining properly and he had to be kept on ventilator,” doctors said.
Though a team of doctors including physicians, Anaesthetists, pulmonologists, have given round the clock service, he had cardiac arrest and was declared dead at 9.37 am on Sunday.
Doctors said the journalist was already suffering from Myasthenia Gravis, in which all the muscles will have weakness including respiratory muscles. For this, he had undergone surgery also and he had been on steroids for that condition.
“With these comorbidities, he became a Covid positive and had bilateral pneumonia with type 1 respiratory failure and ARDS,” the hospital authorities said.
This is the first case of a journalist in the Telugu states succumbing to dreaded Coronavirus. At least 10-12 other journalists, including those from national media, have tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 10 days.
In fact, journalists in Hyderabad who had been on field work had been bringing pressure on the state government to conduct tests for them but the health department authorities have refused to test them for a long time since they had no symptoms.
It was only after repeated requests, the government reluctantly agreed to get them tested in two batches. Manoj was tested in the second batch. “Had he been tested well in advance, he would have survived,” a journalist said.
Several journalists are now demanding that the government should enforce lockdown strictly in Hyderabad as number of Coronavirus positive cases is on the rise since relaxation of the restrictions.
There has been a sharp rise in the number of Covid-19 cases and related fatalities in Telangana, with 206 new cases and 10 deaths reported on Saturday. In Greater Hyderabad alone, as many as 152 cases were reported in a single day, taking the number of cases in the capital region alone to 2,096.
The total number of Covid-19 fatalities in the State, with Saturday’s 10, has now gone up to 123, while the total number of cases so far has reached 3,496.