Final fortnight, a digicam operator working within the studio of a information community within the western metropolis of Mumbai joined a few of his colleagues to check for the novel coronavirus which was sweeping the town.

Days after, the 35-year-old man examined constructive. He had developed no signs in any respect.

“It got here as a shock to all of us. He hadn’t even stepped exterior for work,” Prasad Kathe, the editor of Jai Maharashtra, instructed me.

Since then, 15 individuals working on the seven-year-old Marathi information community have examined constructive for the virus. Most of them are reporters and camerapersons. Three weeks in the past, the community stopped deploying journalists for subject assignments. Most of them are quarantined at residence.

The contagion has successfully shut down the community’s 12,000 sq ft two-studio newsroom in an eight-storey constructing within the busy neighbourhood of Andheri. Solely two individuals – an electrician and a manufacturing management room technician – stay there.

A majority of the 120 workers – from the journalists to technicians to firm drivers – have been examined. The outcomes are arriving slowly from the overwhelmed labs. The infections might rise additional.

“Hit by the virus, operating a reside information channel grew to become a problem,” Mr Kathe instructed me. “So we needed to redesign our format to maintain it operating.”

For the final three weeks, the direct-to-home community has been broadcasting six 28-minute reside bulletins a day as an alternative of the standard 18. The remainder of the time is full of recorded information and present affairs programmes.

And the station is way from the one one to be affected: nearly 100 journalists have examined constructive for the virus – a substantial quantity in a rustic the place simply greater than 35,000 instances have been formally reported.

Anchors sitting of their boxy properties within the space-starved metropolis have arrange cameras and gamely learn the information with the community’s branding within the background. The broadcasts are relayed to its manufacturing centre residence utilizing their residence broadband and 4G cell hotspots.

“There are glitches. Typically the electrical energy goes off within the anchor’s residence in the midst of the bulletin. Typically the web will get disconnected. It isn’t straightforward, however we’re coping and have not missed a single bulletin,” says Mr Kathe.

India has ordered its individuals to remain at residence, shut companies and suspended all transport in what’s the world’s most grinding lockdown to include the unfold of the novel coronavirus.

However many journalists – particularly working for networks – have been going out frequently to report and getting contaminated.

Some 35 are infected in southern Chennai city. A sports activities photographer within the japanese metropolis of Kolkata has died in what medical doctors consider was a suspected case of Covid-19. There are stories of 19 employees of the influential Punjab Kesari media group in the city of Ludhiana in Punjab state testing constructive. Earlier this month, the group requested its workers to make money working from home.

However many of the infections have been reported from Mumbai, which has emerged as a raging hotspot – practically 7,000 infections and 290 deaths have been reported in India’s monetary and leisure capital to this point.

Fifty-three of the 167 journalists examined for the an infection within the metropolis to this point have turned in constructive outcomes. Three dozen of them have returned residence; the others are recovering in hospitals. Many extra are quarantined at properties and resorts. Some 170 extra journalists are ready to be examined.

A lot of the contaminated are TV reporters and camerapersons and have proven no signs. Nearly all of the contaminated in India could possibly be asymptomatic or show mild symptoms, reckons the Indian Council of Medical Analysis.

However why are so many journalists getting contaminated with the virus?

“There is a bunch of causes. Initially, there was numerous editorial stress on TV journalists at some networks to exit and get visuals of the lockdown. Then there have been some over-enthusiastic journalists who presumably did not take sufficient precautions. They had been going to hotspots and filming and doing interviews,” Vinod Jagdale, president of Mumbai’s TV Journalist Affiliation, instructed me.

The journalists had been additionally taking firm taxis on assignments and sharing compact work locations with colleagues on return to workplace. The contaminated embody no less than three drivers who had been driving the journalists round.

Issues are so dangerous now that networks have despatched most of their journalists to make money working from home.

“There’s numerous worry among the many journalists. Most of them have stopped going out. Their bosses are actually extra cautious about pushing them to get out and do tales,” says Mr Jagdale.

Ronny Roy, a sports activities photographer based mostly in Kolkata who had shot an assignment for BBC News site six years in the past, had no such fears.

His final task was to cowl a cricket match in Rajkot in western Gujarat state in March. He had taken precaution by carrying a face masks and washing his fingers frequently. Weeks after returning residence he developed a nagging fever and dry cough and physique ache. He died final week with none remedy.

On 24 April, he awoke and complained of breathlessness. “I’m having issues respiration,” he instructed a fellow photographer on the cellphone. “Get me an ambulance rapidly as a result of I’ll die when you do not.”

The ambulance arrived after three hours. He collapsed inside an hour of reaching the hospital and suffered from a coronary heart assault. “They by no means even bought the time to check him,” says a member of the family. Well being officers stated Roy was a suspected Covid-19 case, and the household was barred from attending his cremation.

There are well laid out guidelines for journalists reporting on Covid-19. Ensuring they’re adopted is necessary. Barkha Dutt, who has reported extra on the pandemic and the fallout of the lockdown than every other journalist in India, says she follows each precaution in her gruelling routine.

Ms Dutt has travelled greater than 4,000km (2,485 miles) from her base in Delhi to report from 5 states in just a little greater than a month. Her three-member crew and the automobile driver have remained unchanged throughout her journeys.

“Precautions have modified because the science has,” Ms Dutt instructed me. “We put on masks and gloves always. We guarantee our mike is tied to a stick and we interview from a bodily distance as an alternative of huddling too near the interviewee.”

After each shoot, the crew dispose off their gloves and masks and wash their fingers and gear with antiseptic lotion and particular sponge.

After they entered a Covid-19 hospital within the hotspot metropolis of Indore, they wore protecting gear. They usually attempt to guarantee that they return to their properties in Delhi so “keep away from unusual beds in public locations.”

“It’s typical for us to drive eight hours a method, shoot for 4 to 5 hours after which drive again one other eight hours to Delhi,” says Ms Dutt.

With all of the precautions, pandemic journalism is actually an act of braveness and really laborious work.

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