Team News Riveting
Kochi, October 20
An unfortunate son served food to his “dead” father for days after he passed away because of a pandemic in Kerala that had bagged international awards for COVID-19 management.
The 85-year-old COVID-19 patient had been lying dead for five days in a mortuary in Thiruvananthapuram while his son, unaware that his father was no more, had been taking food and clothes to a hospital in Kollam.
The patient was earlier admitted at the taluk hospital in Punalur on August 26, and was later shifted to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College after he was diagnosed with COVID-19. He was tested positive after 15 days at the taluk hospital.
The Punalur hospital had informed the son, who is a head-load worker, that his father was shifted to Paripally. The son had been under the impression that his father was admitted at the Government Hospital in Parippally while he was in Thiruvananthapuram where he died on October 13.
Not coming to know of his father’s death, he had been taking food and clothing to the hospital which the authorities kept accepting. It had in fact gone to another COVID-19 patient at the hospital, with the same name. It was only after five days he could release when the patient was shifted to ward and allowed to meet the visitors.
The son could later discover his father was no more and the body had been kept in the mortuary of Thiruvananthapuram government hospital. The mix-up has triggered a controversy over the handling of COVID-19 patients in the state even as the son said he would lodge a complaint against the hospital authorities.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the matter would be investigated.
