MUMBAI – I was on assignment April 20 outside Mumbai, India’s financial center. My phone rang nonstop. Fellow news photographers checked whether I’d heard about the COVID-19 tests we had taken days earlier at the Mumbai Press Club.
I hadn’t yet, and I was anxious. Then I received the news: I was positive. I’d covered the Kashmir conflict, a devastating tsunami in Sri Lanka, the war in Afghanistan and other dangerous assignments.
I'd never flinched. But this terrified me. I called my office and told them. We called off the shoot. As I drove home, questions circled my brain: What next?
What about my wife and kids? How would my mum take the news? I spent that evening on the phone with other COVID-19-positive photographers.