Thread by @BehzadFatmi

I have a harrowing #Covid19India story to tell.

I and my wife arrived at 12:30 PM on Saturday, 21st March at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport after a 14 hours flight. It took us nearly 24 hours to go through two stages of medical screening and immigration clearance.

There was total chaos at the airport. At this time of a global pandemic when social distancing is absolutely necessary, hundreds of arriving passengers from different incoming flights were made to stand in a crowd and mismanagement meant that they were heckling their way through.

I shudder to think how dangerous it was for people to stand so close to each other during a global pandemic. Even if one of them was a carrier of #COVID19, think how many healthy people he/she might have infected in the process.

There was no mechanism to ensure that those who arrived first are processed first. It was left on the passengers and we all know how uncourteous Indians could be in queues!

As we were trying to maintain some distance from the crowd it just meant that everyone arriving after us were processed before us and there was no end in sight to this.

We finally had to join the crowd and behave like everyone else.

Following this ordeal, I have been asked to self-quarantine for 14 days at home and my wife has been sent to a Government quarantine facility at SGT Hospital, Gurgaon for equal number of days. Wonder how this decision was made? Without any medical test.

We were made to wait for almost 24 hours at the airport for questions by doctors like, "how are you feeling", "do you have fever, headache or sore throat" etc.

Yes, both I and my wife had headache and were feeling feverish from what we were made to suffer at the airport. There was no medical test to diagnose whether it was due to #COVID19.

It has been more than 36 hours now at the Government quarantine facility for my wife and yet no medical test has been done on her. Let alone a medical test, she hasn't even been visited by a doctor.

Wondering how the quarantine facility is where my wife has been kept? There are about 50 people (young and old & men and women) in one hall and they have 3-4 toilets and equal number of bathrooms to share. Yes, 3-4 toilets for 50 people at a #COVID19 quarantine facility!

I urge the national and international media to robustly report on this criminal handling of a pandemic by the Indian government.

@nytimes @washingtonpost @WSJ @WHO @UN @ndtv @the_hindu @IndianExpress @guardian @Independent @haaretzcom @spectatorindex @AIIndia @amnesty @MSF

Our story on NPR: The Conditions Inside One Quarantine Facility In Delhi As India Declares Lockdown
npr.org/2020/03/24/820…