‘Very stressed, not what we need at this time’: Brother of Google techie who has COVID-19 to TNM

A viral report on Saturday said that the wife of the Bengaluru techie fled quarantine, which was refuted by the Karnataka government.

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A viral media report said on Saturday that a woman fled coronavirus quarantine in Bengaluru after her husband was found to be positive for the virus – which the Karnataka government then said was false. By then, however, several comments were made online – ranging from calling the woman irresponsible, to calling for her to be shot. While the man, a techie with Google in Bengaluru, has tested positive for COVID-19, the results of the wife, who is in isolation in Agra, are yet to come. Meanwhile, the UP government has claimed that the woman and her family lied to them about her whereabouts. Given below is the sequence of events, according to the family.

Speaking to TNM, the Google techie’s brother said that the couple left for Greece on their honeymoon on February 23, and returned to Mumbai late on March 6. According to the brother, they spent the weekend with the techie’s parents in Mumbai, and took a flight to Bengaluru on March 8, and landed at 9.45 pm.

“From there, my sister-in-law was supposed to leave for Delhi. Many people are asking why she didn’t leave for Delhi directly from Mumbai. They were on their honeymoon, and the baggage was too much. The allowance for international flights is higher than domestic. They wanted to bring their luggage back to Bengaluru, so they came here. He took the luggage home and she left for Delhi,” said the techie’s brother.

The brother says that the couple stayed in the airport till she had to depart, which was at 1.40 am on March 9. From there, she took a train to Agra.

“On March 9, my brother went to office after a few hours of sleep, and Google was screening people. They weren’t letting anyone with a higher than usual temperature to work. He cleared the screenings. A few hours later, he complained of a headache, which he attributed to a lack of sleep and to travel, and was allowed to go home,” the brother said.

The fever didn’t subside, and the brother took the techie to the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases on the evening of March 10 to get him tested for COVID-19. The brother said that they were allowed to go home, and were told that they would be informed if anything.

“The very next evening, we got a call that they are suspecting him to be positive and they were sending an ambulance to isolation till the confirmation report can be available. On March 11, the ambulance came and around 11 pm, he was moved to a hospital isolation ward,” he said.

The next day, on March 12, they received confirmation that the techie was positive. This was corroborated by Google’s statement on March 12, which asked employees to work from home for one day in order to sanitise the office.

On the same day in Agra, according to the brother, the woman and her family were told to give their samples. However, he said that the hospital they were taken to was extremely unhygienic. A friend of the couple, in a Facebook post, posted pictures of the hospital’s washroom, with stagnant water.

“They didn’t want to stay there and asked to be discharged until they are positive. The doctor discharged them on the condition that they will be under home isolation until the report comes, and everyone will have to wear a mask,” he said.

On March 13, the wife was moved to an isolation ward as a precautionary measure, but the family was reluctant to be taken to the same hospital. “The UP CMO (Chief Minister’s office) assured them that it would be looked into and that they would be moved to a different place. My sister-in-law was moved to a different place, but the family had to stay in the same place,” he said.

“When you go on Twitter, there are so many hate comments. They believe anything they read online and have an opinion. They are spreading things like ‘people like this are shot in China’ and all that. It's very stressful to go through that. We try to ignore it to a certain level but it still gets to you. That’s not what we need at this hour. My brother is still running a fever and has a headache, and has barely been able to sleep,” the techie’s brother says.

When asked about the government’s charge that clear details were not given about the woman’s journey, he says that they have the tickets, and are willing to show them.

However, the Indian Express reported that the woman is now facing an FIR, and Agra District Magistrate Prabhu Narain Singh told the newspaper that when they went to her house first, her father told them that she had left for Bengaluru on a train. “However, we put her phone on surveillance, and her location was found to be in Agra itself. I then sent a police team and she was found hiding in her house,” he said.

Multiple media reports quoted Agra’s district magistrate that the father of the techie’s wife lied about the whereabouts.

This, the family says, is after she was discharged from the hospital and was in home isolation. The family confirmed that the father was scared authorities would take her to the same hospital. "He was worried due to the previous day's events and the hygiene conditions in the hospital, and wanted to keep her under home isolation," the brother says.

On Sunday evening, an FIR was filed against the techie’s father-in-law Sections 269 and 270 of the IPC, which pertain to negligently or maliciously acts which are likely to spread an infection.

Though the viral story had factual errors, many have pointed out on social media that people coming from abroad should quarantine themselves and not put others in danger. All across India, the administration is struggling with this as they have to trace scores of people that COVID-19 patients met, at a time when they should have been in self-imposed quarantine.