GUWAHATI: The number of Covid-19 positive cases in northeast climbed to 24 after five more cases were reported in Assam , Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh on Thursday. 22 of these cases have links with the Nizamuddin Markaz congregation.The count in Assam increased to 20 on Thursday morning after samples from three more persons in Goalpara district tested positive. On Wednesday there were 17 positive cases in the state, including four hospitalized in New Delhi. All the 20 positive cases in the state were delegates of the Tablighi Jamaat Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “We are still trying to trace 15 persons who have come back from Nizamuddin Markaz.”Sarma said that there were 503 delegates from the state had attended the religious congregation. “We have been successful in establishing contact with 488 of them and have so far collected 361 samples from which 16 samples have been found to be positive. We are waiting for the results of the other samples. We expect results of 98 samples by tomorrow noon.”“We cannot say that we are out of danger. Our focus is on those people who have returned from Nizamuddin. They did not disclose their travel history and became untraceable. Our health workers swept every nook and corner in search of these people. We have to test at least three times the negative cases because in many cases it takes 14 days for the virus shows up,” Sarma added.Arunachal Pradesh open its account after one person from Tezu in Lohit district tested positive. He was a delegate of the Tablighi Jamaat . In Manipur too the single fresh case reported on Thursday also had links to Nizamuddin. The state’s total positive case now stand at two.