Take Covid precautions seriously: Widowed frontliner nurse in UAE

Dubai - She notes that people who take the disease lightly should really think twice.

When Indian expat Jinu Johnson was first told that she would be looking after Covid patients at the isolation unit of her hospital, she was unfazed.

Although the 36-year-old was mentally prepared to catch the virus herself — a near inevitability if you’re spending over 12 hours in high-risk zones — what the mum-of-two never expected was for her husband to fall victim to the disease that has now claimed over 1.5 million lives across the world.

It was back in June that Johnson George — who’d been working from home since the start of the lockdown — first started displaying symptoms. “He had throat pain, mild fever, cough and weakness. He was given antibiotics, but the fever refused to subside,” recalls Jinu. When the frontline nurse noticed his cough was beginning to resemble that of the patients she was looking after, she took him to the hospital.

Johnson was admitted on June 3, where he tested positive for Covid. That’s when Jinu too underwent a swab test and discovered she was Covid-positive too. “I was asymptomatic the entire time,” she says.

Although his condition started out poor, Johnson began showing signs of improvement over the course of the next three days. “I was able to call and talk to him over video,” says Jinu, who had to go into quarantine as well. But things spiralled very quickly after that.

Unfortunately, Johnson had a pre-existing condition of diabetes that wasn’t in control and it complicated matters further. He died on June 18 at the age of 37.

— karen@khaleejtimes.com