Lockdown LIVE: COVID-19 Testing Was Inadequate, Says Gul Panag
Gul Panag talks about balancing work, baby daily chores and her tweet to the finance minister.
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On 23 March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown, until 14 April, to curb the spread of coronavirus, which means all of us will be isolating at home for some time to come.
Gul Panag spoke to The Quint about having to see her husband, who is a pilot, working, when everyone else was staying at home.
She says, “This is a new war with different kind of soldiers and different kind of enemies. And you just got to do your bit in it.” But she maintained some strict protocols to keep her family safe. “There is very little one can do in these circumstances. I don’t have the luxury of living in a massive bungalow where I could put him in one room. The only thing we did was, he shifted to the study and he was staying there and that’s the best we could do,” she says.
She also spoke about what she thinks about the lockdown. She says that it was much-needed but she wishes it happened a little earlier. But she is unhappy with the minimal testing happening.
“My husband wanted to get tested. But there was no protocol to be tested. You had to fulfill two conditions right - symptoms and history of travel. So he had history of travel but no symptoms. So testing was absolutely inadequate.”
Gul Panag also runs a production company, and amidst the lockdown, she tweeted to the finance minister for urgent clarification with regard to closing books for year 2019-2020.
She says that she has not received any response to the tweet yet.
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