Conducting Covid tests for 14 hours every day, 25-year-old Gopa Biswas has willingly given up on weekly leave, her favourite food, television, even music.

What has come as a shock is that she has also had to give up her lodgings three times in less than a month and a half — because neighbours wouldn’t stand a Covid lab employee living close to them.

But the medical technologist at the Suri district hospital isn’t discouraged. Rather, she’s proud of being one among the 10,000-odd healthcare workers at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic in the around 100 government and private establishments in Bengal.

Gopa, who helps conduct about 600 Covid tests daily, says she can’t find the time to cook her favourite dishes and has been eating the same meal of egg curry and rice twice almost every day.

For over two months, she hasn’t taken a single day off to go and meet her parents at Madanpur village in Chakdah, Nadia, 215km from Suri.

“The life of a medical technologist at a Covid testing lab can’t be the same as that of others.… We can’t afford to relax during a pandemic,” said the young woman whose life revolves around the RT-PCR machine at the hospital lab that tests swab samples of suspected Covid-19 patients.

Gopa is what chief minister Mamata Banerjee calls a “Covid warrior”.

But landlord after landlord had refused to rent rooms to Gopa when she first arrived in Birbhum in the first week of July from Nadia.

Her first address was a garage, which she had to quit after a few days, mostly under neighbourhood pressure. She then somehow managed to secure a room but the landlord threw her out after a few days, and she landed up at a government nursing hostel.

“But I couldn’t stay there long as the kitchen was closed,” Gopa said.

The mess was shut because most of the trainee nurses had left after the lockdown started. So, in the little time her backbreaking work at the hospital left her with, Gopa’s house-hunting continued.

“The next landlord served me with a notice to leave within four days.… He cited ‘personal problems’ but I knew the reason,” Gopa said.

A colleague helped her find new lodgings in Suri town and Gopa moved in on August 15. The accommodation problem seems to have been solved for now, but daily life — the better part of it spent sweating and suffocating inside the personal protection equipment (PPE) — remains difficult.

Gopa says she gets so tired after 14 hours in PPE that all she can do is rustle up some egg curry and rice before hitting the sack. She eats the same egg curry next morning before leaving for work.

“It takes 35 minutes to get into the PPE before work every day, and 50 minutes to get out of it afterwards (while maintaining all safety protocols). One doesn’t feel like cooking delicacies after that,” she said.

“Trust me, I never spent so much time getting ready even for a wedding,” the daughter of a primary school teacher smiled.

Gopa had earned her diploma in medical technology from the College of Medicine and JNM Hospital, popularly known as Kalyani Medical College, in Nadia in 2015.

She then got a temporary job as a laboratory assistant at a rural hospital in Chakdah. After the pandemic struck, she got a job with the Suri hospital as a permanent employee.

“A temporary employee gets around Rs 20,000 a month while a permanent employee earns around Rs 10,000 more.... I grabbed the offer as I have to look after my old parents,” Gopa, whose elder sister got married a few years ago, said.

“I have to call my parents twice every day as they constantly worry about me. I tell them we are well protected and that regular tests are conducted on us. But at times, they refuse to understand and tell me to leave this job.”

Gopa, though, is committed to her work and finds the challenge stimulating.

“It would be a disaster if a Covid-positive person is declared negative. So, even while sweating inside the PPE, we can’t afford to lose our concentration,” she said.

But her oppressive schedule means she has no opportunity to “chill” afterwards. She does not have the time to watch television or listen to music — among her favourite pastimes in the pre-Covid days — nor can she go out with friends during weekends.

“All this can wait but our work can’t,” Gopa says as she gets ready to leave for the laboratory for another gruelling day.