New Delhi: It was the death of a 74-year-old man in Telangana on Saturday that led to the subsequent spotlight on the role of the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) in south Delhi’s Nizamuddin ‘Markaz’ (centre) in infecting people across India with the dreaded COVID 2019.
Luv Aggrawal, joint secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said on Thursday: "We came to know about the role played by the Jamaat cluster in the COVID 19 outbreak following the first death reported from Telangana."
"People in Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Bihar, and a few other states got infected as the Jamaat cluster started visiting those states."
Aggrawal said that about 400 COVID 19 positive cases with epidemiological linkage to the Jamaat cluster have been detected.
"173 people in Tamil Nadu, 11 in Rajasthan, 47 in Delhi, Andaman & Nicobar 9, Puducherry 2, Telangana 33, Andhra Pradesh 67, Assam 16, and 22 people in Jammu & Kashmir have been found COVID 19 positive with their linkages to Tablighi Jamaat cluster," said Aggrawal.
Meanwhile, the Union home ministry has brought more than 9,000 people under its lens with TJ links.
"We have identified 9,000 people across India who have either visited the Nizamuddin 'Markaz' or came in contact with Tablighi Jamaat workers. All of them have been quarantined. There were 1,306 foreign nationals also," said Puniya Salila Srivastava, joint secretary in the home ministry.
Srivastava said that 2,000 people, found in the ‘Markaz’, have been quarantined. “As many as 334 people from the ‘Markaz’ have been hospitalized,” said Srivastava.
The number of positive cases from the TJ cluster might go up as many test results are still awaited.
Following the spread of COVID 19 infection through the Jamaat workers, the health ministry is anticipating that the figure of infected persons from across India might increase.
Of the total COVID 19 positive cases in the country, almost 20 per cent are linked to TJ meet. As many as 15 people connected to the TJ meet died in different states across India. Telangana has reported nine deaths while Delhi, Maharashtra, and J&K have reported two deaths each.
The infection through the TJ cluster has also spread to the Northeastern states with Assam registering 16 COVID 19 positive cases while Manipur has two. Fifteen cases from Assam and both the cases from Manipur have a connection to the TJ cluster.
On Thursday, the TJ issue also got highlighted in the video-conferencing between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief ministers of different states. The CMs spoke on their efforts to maintain social distancing, tracking suspect cases, identifying and quarantining suspect cases linked to the ‘Markaz’.
Meanwhile, Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla wrote another letter to state chief sectaries and DGPs for the implementation of total lockdowns across India.
Till Thursday morning, India had registered 1,965 COVID 19-positive cases of which 1,764 were still active. Fifty people have died in the country till now due to COVID 19. Significantly, 150 people with COVID 19 found positive have been discharged from different hospitals across the country.
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