Authorities launched nationwide search for participants of a huge religious congregation held earlier this month in national capital’s Nizamuddin area even as several fresh cases of Covid-19 were reported on Tuesday from Delhi, Maharashtra, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar, among other places, taking the nationwide tally past 1,400 with at least 45 deaths. A consolidated official tally was not announced in the Union Home Ministry’s daily press briefing.
Officials fear thousands of participants of the Tablighi Jamaat held in mid-March in Nizamuddin, which has become the new epicentre of the deadly virus pandemic, could have carried the infection to the length and breadth of the country.
Meanwhile, the government separately told the Supreme Court it had taken “proactive and preemptive timely steps” to deal with the coronavirus pandemic but termed fake news as the biggest hindrance and sought a direction for the media not to publish any Covid-19 information without ascertaining facts with authorities.
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 was using cluster containment strategies and doing rigorous contact tracing in these hotspots to check the virus from further spreading. Within the national capital, more than 1,000 people who attended the congregation were quarantined while more than 300 were admitted to hospitals. 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. In the national capital alone, at least 24 people who took part in the religious congregation, Tablighi Jamaat, have tested positive for 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 ‘tabligh’ activities this year, including those from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan. It also said all State police have been asked to locate Indian Tabligh Jamaat workers from local coordinators, followed by their medical screening and quarantine. So far, 2,137 such people were identified and being medically examined and quarantined, while more would be located, the Ministry said.
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. According to officials, other States from where the attendees had come include Telangana, 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. Including the 24 new cases related to Nizamuddin, the total number of confirmed cases in Delhi was seen nearing 100, while Maharashtra reported 72 new coronavirus patients in the State including 59 in Mumbai. Kerala also reported 7 new cases, taking the total number of those affected in the State to 215. It also reported its second death from Covid-19. Fresh deaths were also reported from West Bengal and Punjab, among other places.
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