Following his recovery from COVID-19, G. Parthiban, Sub-Inspector, K10 Koyambedu Police Station, is all set to rejoin duty, on June 1. He is said to have contracted the contagion while patrolling the wholesale vegetable market in Koyambedu, which emerged as a COVID-19 hotspot in the last week of April.
The 54-year-old policeman was actually asymptomatic; however, being a frontline worker, he decided to take the test, and he did just that on April 28 and the next day, he received a call from the Greater Chennai Corporation informing him that he was COVID-19 positive.
On the same day, he was admitted at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Park Town, got discharged on May 8 and was in home quarantine till May 27.
By taking that test on a precautionary note, he has prevented the rest of the family from getting infected.
“Ours is a joint family. My 67-year-old sister and my mother who is 85 are with me. Therefore, we had to be more careful. So, ever since people started being treated for COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu, that is during the first week of March, I decided to physically isolate myself.
“I began to stay on the first floor of our house. Without entering the room on the first floor, my wife would place the food at the doorstep and leave,” says Parthiban, a resident of Mangadu.
The policeman shares his observations about Koyambedu market, as he saw it while he was on duty there during the early weeks of the lockdown: Labourers who carried heavy sacks of agricultural produce on their backs would not wear masks as they found it difficult to breathe. And people residing at areas nearby used to come and buy vegetables daily at the market, instead of their local neighbourhood shops.
