Last June, 32-year-old Imran Shaikh began experiencing a vague fatigue, accompanied by a runny nose in the afternoon and high fever at night. What he didn’t realise then was that this was the beginning of his and his family’s fight against COVID-19, one that would bring them closer, but also end in tragedy.

Shaikh, who is an automobile sales executive, thought it was the seasonal flu. The next day (June 20), he visited his doctor, whose medicines treated the fever, but Shaikh realised that he had lost his sense of smell and taste. Suspicious, on June 25, he got himself tested for COVID-19. On June 27, he was told he had tested positive.