Pregnant mum’s emotional COVID warning before death

Dimple Arora Chawla, a 34-year-old New Delhi doctor, recorded a video message days before her death begging people not to underestimate the virus.

India’s double-mutant strain of the virus has ravaged the country, with the nation seeing new record infections rates almost every week.

The latest daily figures show an increase of 362,727 cases and 4120 deaths. India has now confirmed more than 23.7 million infections and more than 256,000 deaths, however, experts have warned the real number is likely much higher.

Dimple, who was seven months pregnant, was diagnosed with COVID-19 on April 11. Six days into her illness she felt her symptoms worsening and decided to record a message in a bid to convince others about the deadly nature of this virus.

“I really want to tell each and every one, please don’t take corona so lightly,” she said in the video.

“Very bad, very bad symptoms. I am not able to speak, but I really want to convey my message to all.

“Please wear a mask whenever you go outside, whenever you interact with people for your near one dear ones’ safety.

“Please tell your family members, don’t take it so lightly. Don’t remove your mask.”

Dimple said she always wanted to work and was so active before contracting the virus but her “body is giving up now”.

Throughout the video, she could be seen struggling to breathe.

She finished the video with a simple plea: “Please, please take care,” she said.

Nine days after recording the message Dimple, along with her unborn baby, died.

Her husband Ravish Chawla shared his wife’s message to Twitter in the hopes others would heed her warning.

“She was completely devoted to motherhood and went to heavens with our unborn child to take care of him and left our 3.5-year child to me,” he wrote in a post on Mother’s Day.

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Mr Chawla said his wife always took great care to protect herself from the virus, such as wearing double and triple masks and PPE when out in public.

He told local TV station NDTV his wife was admitted to hospital in late April when her health began to drastically deteriorate.

A few days after she was admitted she started to feel labour pains, with a subsequent ultrasound showing their baby had no heartbeat.

Mr Chawla couldn’t bring himself to tell his sick wife that their child had died after she went through an emergency caesarean.

“She said, ‘I want to see my baby, I want to see my baby,’” he said.

“In her anxiety, her oxygen levels started to drop. I somehow had to tell her: ‘Your baby is alive.’ I lied to her, which I did not want to do.”

Dimple died the following day, leaving behind her husband and their three-year-old son.

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Bodies of suspected COVID victims washing up

India’s COVID-19 situation is showing no signs of improving, with overflowing hospitals, mass cremation sites and bodies washing up along the Ganges river among some the grim scenes occurring across the country.

Authorities have been forced to install a net across the river after dozens of suspected virus victims washed up on the shore.

The discovery of 71 corpses in Bihar state stoked fears that the virus was raging unseen in India’s vast rural hinterland where two-thirds of its people live.

Locals suggested to AFP that relatives immersed the bodies in the river because they could not afford wood for traditional Hindu cremations or because crematoriums were overwhelmed by the number of funerals.

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Bihar’s water resources minister Sanjay Kumar said on Twitter on Wednesday that a “net has been placed” in the river on the state border with Uttar Pradesh and patrolling increased.

He said the impoverished state’s government was “pained at both the tragedy as well as harm to the river Ganges”.

Kumar added that post-mortems confirmed that the corpses had been dead four to five days.

Press reports said as many as 25 bodies had also been recovered in the Gahmar district of Uttar Pradesh state.

The Hindu daily quoted a local police official there as saying there were long queues at cremation grounds in the northern state.

“It is possible that in hurry some disposed of the bodies in the river like this,” Hitendra Krishna was quoted as saying.

– with AFP