OW COVID Patient Calls Out Discrimination in the Community

Gabriella Chable

Another COVID-19 patient is sharing her status so that those who may have come in contact with her are aware.  Twenty-five-year-old Gabriella Chable of Orange Walk Town says that when she found out a close friend of hers tested positive, she immediately isolated herself and went to request a test.  When she eventually got that result, it was positive. Chable told us that her symptoms were mild; she caught a fever, stuffy nose and lost her sense of taste. But now she is doing well and has had no complications as a result of the virus. But this patient says it has been hard to deal with the attack from the public. She has been harassed and discriminated online and in her town. Today, she shares what that experience with the hope that it would caution the public about the effects it can have on other patients.

Gabriella Chable, COVID-19 Patient

“When my friend got the results that he is positive, I went early the Friday morning to get tested and by the time I came home which like fifteen or twenty minutes after that and my granny way dah San Pablo heard that I am dying on my bed from COVID and then people started to blast me on Facebook and a whole pile of thing.   I nuh bother about the COVID because I have it. But the judgment is what caused the COVID for me. Because people start to talk about you, you don’t want to hear it but people will be there to send you messages and send you this and that and bring you completely down; bring you completely down. I tried not to let it bother me. I tried to call my friends and everybody because my mom is at states. I am alone; all alone. So, I try to call everybody and try to distract my mind. I don’t go on facebook anymore because I don’t want to hear anything. I just keep to myself, my family and that is it.   The things they say is that I spread the virus in whole ah Orange Walk; that at my work all the teachers and everybody done have it.  My dad, I haven’t seen him for weeks and he sells water and he lost his customers. He goes to the shop because he does the shopping for us and people move away from him because people say that he has the COVID.”