The Covid Survivors - How They Beat Fear, Stigma And The Disease Itself

The testimonies of those who have had a tryst with the disease reveal that a majority experience its mild manifestation. Those who do need critical care can take heart from the relatively high recovery rate and low fatality rate.

- Sonali Acharjee

When Mukhtar Ahmed, a 106-year-old man from the Nawabganj area of Delhi, recovered from COVID-19, hope coursed through the entire neighbourhood. The same people who not so long ago would lay out every currency note in the sun to rid it of any possible virus lurking around and sanitise even their newspapers could now be seen walking around without masks while shopping for groceries. If Ahmed at his age could survive corona, surely they would too.

Yet, it is exactly this kind of complacency or ‘optimism bias’ that doctors and analysts warn against as the disease continues to rage across the world. On June 6, India became the fifth worst-affected country in the world, its tally of 245,670 cases on that day overtaking that of Spain. “We should still be scared,” warns Dr Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), as India emerges from a prolonged lockdown. “We cannot return to a post-Covid world overnight.” (See interview: ‘The main thing now is to save lives’.)

Even though community transmission has not been announced officially in India, it is clear that we are past the point of eradicating the virus let alone containing the contagion. With 276,583 cases as on June 10, around five of every 100 individuals tested in India are currently reporting positive for the virus, a rate that is less than the 9.4 per cent of the United States but more than double the 2.3 per cent of South Korea.