While shopping in a supermarket in March 2021, Maël meets one of his relatives. The conversation lasts only five minutes. He is far from knowing that just a fraction of a second is needed for his life to be turned upside down.
Aged forty years, Maël has two children. A Graphic designer, he is working from home since the Covid-19. He relates that it was around one o’clock in the afternoon the next day he met his relative, that he received a call from an officer of the ministry of health. “He informed me the person I met yesterday has been tested positive for Covid-19. They gave my family and I three hours to collect our essential stuffs before channeling us to a hotel in the north which has been converted in a quarantine centre. To the anxiety of having contracted the virus and having inadvertently passed it on to his family, added then the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen in the future”, confides the young father.
Arriving at the hotel early morning, the medical staff took the temperature of Maël and his children. They were given the keys of the room where they are going to be quarantined for the next 14 days. However, it is on the following day that they do their first PCR Tests. In the evening, the results are out and everyone was negative to Covid-19. Relieved, Maël still maintains the sanitary precautions and continuously disinfects the room to ensure the health of his children while working remotely.
No one to take care of my children
After seven days, Maël and his family did a second PCR test. After a day’s wait, the news that he had been infected with the virus fell like a sledgehammer on the head. His children are once again negative for Covid-19. Asymptomatic, Maël was taken to ENT hospital around 9 p.m. “Since there were no one to take care of my children, I had to drag them with me to the treatment center. It was a traumatic experience for them. Especially this ambulance ride while being escorted by the police. They were very scared,” says the young dad.
An hour later, Maël and his children arrive at ENT hospital. They are taken to a room for x-rays. However, it is only Maël who is subjected to a blood test. Then, the small family is directed to the room where they were going to spend the whole night. “My kids couldn’t understand why they were in a hospital when they weren’t sick. I had to constantly reassure them and it was not easy. We were also on our own and it was not until the next day that we had tea and food,” he says.
After his temperature check, Maël then learns that he, together with his children, will be transferred to a hotel for infected persons at the end of the day. Having cough and body aches, Maël waits for his departure while constantly checking the hands of the clock. At around 4 p.m., an ambulance with the flashing light on comes to pick Maël and his children. They are taken to a hotel for positive patients. “I felt like I was a plague. I still wonder today, if all of this was really necessary,” he says.
It’s been a difficult experience starting from the ride in the ambulance
In his new isolation room, the young executive struggles to understand how he will divide the space to avoid the risk of transmitting the virus to his children who were negative to the virus. “We needed at least one connecting room so that they could sleep away from me. But we ended up being confined with each other,” he adds. And that went on for more than three weeks while the wait for Maël to be tested negative to Covid-19. “It’s been a difficult experience starting from the ride in the ambulance, to the problems with the food, coupled with the psychological distress and the urge to get home as soon as possible,” shares Maël.
Cured of Covid-19, the young man maintains that this experience marked him for life. After three months of his stay in quarantine and treatment center, Maël is now vaccinated against Covid-19 but does not let his guard down when it comes to sanitary precautions. “No one is safe to the risks of contamination to the virus. I really don’t want to relive this experience again. So I do my best to protect myself and my children from the virus by wearing the masks, sanitizing the hands and keeping the social distance etc,” concludes Maël, who lives in Plaines Wilhems.
