35 more test Covid-positive in Delhi after event
Published on: Wednesday, April 01, 2020
By: News18
Over 300 foreign nationals had attended the event in Nizamuddin, including 72 from Indonesia, 71 from Thailand, 19 from Nepal, 20 from Malaysia, 33 from Myanmar, 34 from Sri Lanka, 19 from Bangladesh and 28 rfom Kyrgyzstan.
NEW DELHI: The headquarters of a religious sect in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area, which has developed into one of the biggest coronavirus disease (Covid-19) hot spots in India, was on Tuesday sealed and 800 people moved out in buses were quarantined in different parts of the city as several more positive cases with links to the gathering held here in mid-March emerged.In Delhi, 24 people out of the 102 tested for the virus after being taken to the Lok Nayak Hospital have been found positive so far, while reports of nearly another 200 taken to two other hospitals is still awaited. Another 11 who had attended the gathering of Tabligh-e-Jamaat were found infected in Andhra Pradesh, the state government said on Tuesday, while one patient was a close contact of a person who attended the meet.ADVERTISEMENT
“A grave crime has been committed,” Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said. The Delhi government has accused the organisation of “gross negligence” and said it plans to lodge an FIR against the mosque’s maulana, who denied wrongdoing and said in a statement that no lockdown regulations were violated.
AAP MLA Atishi sought strong action against the Nizamuddin Markaz authorities and asked why the Delhi Police did not take any step despite the government prohibiting such gathering to check the spread of the virus.
So far, nine people with links to the event at the mosque have died across the country – six in Telangana, one in Srinagar, one in Mumbai and one in Tumkuru in Karnataka.
The Telangana administration is estimating over 1,000 people from the state might have attended the congregation, a senior official said, adding search is on to identify people who came in contact with them.ADVERTISEMENT
Of the six people in Telangana, two died in Gandhi Hospital, one each in Apollo Hospital, Global Hospital, in Nizamabad and in Gadwal. A cleric at the event had died in Srinagar last week. He had also visited the Deoband seminary in Uttar Pradesh and on his return to Kashmir, held multiple gatherings.
The links to the deaths in Mumbai and Karnataka emerged on Tuesday as the full scale of the cluster outbreak of coronavirus became a little clearer.
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A 65-year-old Philippines national who died in Mumbai due to Covid-19 on March 22 had attended the congregation along with a group of 10, and three people in the group have also tested positive. The group also stayed at a mosque in Navi Mumbai and the maulana of that mosque has also been infected, along with his son, grandson and domestic help. Many people the priest came in contact with have been quarantined.
The death in Karnataka’s Tumkuru was a 60-year-old who travelled to Delhi by train on March 13. He died at Tumkuru’s designated hospital for Covid-19 patients on March 27. The authorities have traced 24 high risk primary contacts, of which 13 are isolated at the designated hospital, eight have tested negative and three are health care professionals who are house quarantined.
In addition to these cases, nine attendees and the wife of one of them have also tested positive in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, accounting for all 10 cases there. The gathering has also been linked to cases in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
The government, comparing the situation to what unfolded in South Korea, said similar massive surveillance and testing will be initiated around the cluster formed here to control the spread.
Over 300 foreign nationals had attended the event in Nizamuddin, including 72 from Indonesia, 71 from Thailand, 19 from Nepal, 20 from Malaysia, 33 from Mynamar, 34 from Sri Lanka, 19 from Bangladesh and 28 rfom Kyrgyzstan.
The first indications of the site being a source of the disease came in last week when officials in four regions – Andaman, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kashmir – began tracing the travel histories of patients who tested positive there.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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Till now, the most serious instances of the disease spread in India have been in large local clusters –such as in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara, Maharashtra’s Sangli and in Punjab’s Banga. The patients linked to the Delhi mosque have fanned out across the country, in some instances infecting locals, raising the spectre of having triggered community transmission.
The Nizamuddin mosque’s administration, on Tuesday, however, dismissed reports that quarantine protocols were not practised and said that it had tried to comply with the lockdown rules but a large group of visitors were stuck at the markaz (centre) as the government suspended all passenger train operations across the country. – News18