Sharjah: Isolated in a Sharjah hotel with her minor son, an eight-month pregnant Indian woman is waiting for her COVID-19 test results while her husband remains quarantined in another hotel after testing positive.
Sanam Gambhir, 31, underwent tests at a preventive medicine centre in Sharjah earlier this month after her husband, Sunny, 32, tested positive for coronavirus at a health facility in Dubai four days earlier.
Holed up in different hotels and torn apart by circumstances, the couple are on tenterhooks.
“We have been spending sleepless nights agonising over our fate. My due date is near but my COVID-19 results haven’t come, Meanwhile, my husband is yet to make a complete recovery,” said a worried Sanam.
“In the midst of all this, the private hospital in Al Ghusais where I was going for pregnancy-related check-ups has been turned into a designated facility for COVID-19 patients. “I don’t know where I will deliver my baby, when my test results will come and when my husband will be discharged. I have put my faith in God and pray that we tide over these extremely testing times,” she added.
First symptoms
Sunny, who runs a foodstuff company and lives in Sharjah’s Al Taawun neighbourhood, said he suspected he had been infected when he suddenly developed high fever and body ache on March 21.
“I feared passing the infection to my pregnant wife and six year-old child so I immediately isolated myself,” he recalled.
Sunny said he would not be tested earlier as he had no recent travel history.
“The alarm bells rang when Sanam also got fever followed by cough. By now, my condition had also worsened. So we went to a clinic in Sharjah where a doctor wrote a letter recommending COVID-19 testing for me,” he said.
Armed with the letter, Sunny visited a government-run health facility in Al Mizhar and got himself tested.
Dreaded call
A few days later the hospital rang him to inform that he had tested positive.
“I was asked to report to the Preventive Medicine Centre in Sharjah from where I was taken to a hotel in an ambulance and have been here since,” said Sunny, now on the road to recovery.
“My condition has improved significantly but am yet to be tested negative for the disease. I am anxious about my wife quarantined in another hotel just 3km away from my own. She is an advanced stage of pregnancy. I feel so helpless that I can’t be at her side at a time when she needs me most. We speak on the phone and try to motivate each other. There is little else I could do,” said Sunny who hails from Mumbai.
Sanam said she’s keeping well and her fever has subsided. “They have given me a nice suite and I have domestic help to look after me and my son Siddanth. At just six years, he’s is too young to fully comprehend the enormity of the situation but’s been very helpful and caring. In fact with Sunny away, he’s the man of the house.”
