SRINAGAR: Sajad Hassan sat at his professor's hospital bedside for three nights, doing most of the talking as his friend and mentor breathed through an oxygen mask and struggled with a suspected COVID-19 infection.

Both were confident the 48-year-old academic would be heading home soon, until a coronavirus test came back positive and physicians ordered him moved to the isolation ward — known by many at the university hospital as the “dark room” because so few who entered came out alive.