CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta Says His Uncle in India Died of Covid in Personal Segment on Nation’s Pandemic Surge
Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been on CNN almost every day over the past year addressing many questions about the covid-19 pandemic. During a Friday appearance with Jake Tapper, Gupta got personal talking about how his own family has been affected by the current covid-19 surge in India.
There has been a disturbing rise of cases in India this past week. The total number of covid-19 cases in India is now over 18 million and the death toll is over 200,000. On Friday the Biden administration announced restrictions limiting travel from India.
Tapper stared the segment Friday by asking Gupta how his family is doing.
Gupta said he is speaking with his family all the time. “I’m the only doctor in the family, so all questions in the family of a medical nature come to me.”
“One of our favorite uncles passed away a couple of days ago, which was quite shocking,” Gupta said. “He was in his early 70s, pretty healthy, and he died of covid.”
“He was the sort of favorite uncle of all our cousins, the natural gifted storyteller in our family.”
He brought up CNN’s own reporting on the crisis and said, given what he has heard in his conversations with relatives, “there’s still a bit of a disconnect”:
“My relatives are taking this seriously now, but I think that they were getting the message a few weeks ago, and they were happy about it, that they thought they were through this. That’s what they were essentially told… So I think it is a huge amount of whiplash. They are staying home. People are becoming more diligent about wearing masks. Mask-wearing had gone way down. Delhi is in lockdown, they say, until May 3rd, but you can see in Sam’s reporting, you can see in Clarissa’s reporting, there’s still a lot of people out and about. So there’s this real sense of trepidation, Jake. I think this is first time that really, over this past year, I’ve actually heard them sound scared.”
Regarding the covid-19 variant in question, Gupta said, “What we do know about this variant is that a type of it has been seen in South Africa, a type has been seen in California, so it’s not just relegated to India. It’s probably already spread around the world and now being picked up in various places. It’s also becoming increasingly clear from Dr. Fauci now that the vaccines that we’re talking about do seem to be protective against this variant, whether you’re here in the United States getting a vaccine or anywhere else.”
You can watch above, via CNN.
