Tablighi Jamaat Markaz event attendees significantly added to India’s Covid-19 cases on Wednesday as state governments continued to trace, quarantine and test those who were present at the congregation between March 1-15. By Wednesday night, the total number of positive novel coronavirus cases in India was 1,998, with at least 58 deaths.
On Wednesday, over 5,000 of those identified to have attended the congregation have been quarantined, including in hospitals across states, while efforts are on to trace another 2,000 including in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
Experts believe these numbers are likely to go up as several hundred attendees of the religious congregation in south Delhi’s Nizammudin area showed symptoms of Covid-19, their test results are awaited.
Meanwhile, the common people continued to suffer on Day 8 of the nationwide lockdown as essential commodities remained in short supply across the nation. While shopkeepers blamed it on the absence of supply chain, the government assured that it was working to ensure that at least 2 lakh trucks ply on the roads by Thursday, delivering essential food items and medicines.
TABLIGHI JAMAAT-LINKED CASES SPRING ACROSS COUNTRY
In the national capital alone, at least 24 people who took part in the religious congregation, Tablighi Jamaat, have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said, as he slammed the organisers for being “highly irresponsible” on their part to hold such an event at a time when thousands have died in other countries due to the pandemic.
The Union Home Ministry said approximately 2,100 foreigners visited India for ‘tablighi’ activities this year, including those from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan.
It also said that all state police have been asked to locate Indian Tabligh Jamaat workers from local coordinators, followed by their medical screening and quarantine.
So far, 2137 such people have been identified and are being medically examined and quarantined, while more would be located, the Ministry said.
Several state governments, including in West Bengal, Assam and Manipur, said they are taking steps to locate participants of the Nizamuddin event.
Karnataka government said 54 people from the state had attended the event, out of which 13 have been identified but they have tested negative for the Covid-19.
Gujarat police also launched a probe to identify all the attendees from the state and said primary investigations have revealed that some persons from Bhavnagar had attended the congregation.
At least 17 people from Himachal Pradesh also attended the congregation, a state police spokesperson said.
2,100 foreigners visited India for ‘tablighi’ activities this year.
A Srinagar-based businessman is being seen as the “super-spreader” in this entire case as he travelled by air, train and road to Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and back to Jammu and Kashmir before he died of Covid-19 on March 26, raising fears he may have infected many others along the way, officials said on Tuesday.ADVERTISEMENT
Six people in Telangana who attended the meeting in the city’s Nizamuddin West area also died on Monday.
According to officials, other states from where the attendees had come include Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Andaman Nicobar Islands, Rajasthan, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab and Meghalaya.
In Andhra Pradesh, officials said more than half of the 40 people who have tested positive for coronavirus in the state were linked to the Nizamuddin event.
The police registered an FIR against Maulana Saad of the Nizamuddin centre under sections of Epidemic Disease Act and other sections of the Indian Penal Code for violating government orders on the management of the Markaz in relation to a social, political or religious gathering.
The Union Health Ministry lamented that the number of hotspots has risen due to “lack of people’s support and delay in timely detection” of the cases.
Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said the government is using cluster containment strategies and doing rigorous contact tracing in these hotspots to check the virus from further spreading.
Union Health Ministry lamented that the number of hotspots has risen due to “lack of people’s support and delay in timely detection” of the cases.
Within the national capital, more than 1,100 people who attended the congregation have been quarantined while at least 441 have been hospitalised. The government is screening all those who participated in the event, officials said.
Agarwal, however, said it was not the time to find faults but to take action.
