More on Covid-19

Government authorities are tackling a logistical nightmare as they try to map the movements of thousands of people who attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation end-February and early March in New Delhi and then dispersed, many carrying the novel coronavirus to states across the length and breadth of India.The aim is to stop those who attended the congregation, and the people they came into contact with, from inadvertently creating new clusters of infection across the country. The magnitude of the task is immense: three southern states — Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka — were trying to track at least 2,500 people, many of who had tested positive for Covid-19.Authorities believe several clerics from Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, who transited through the Tablighi Jamaat markaz (centre) in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin West, may have been the original source of the infections in the cluster.At least eight Muslim attendees are dead — six from Telangana , and one each from Tamil Nadu and New Delhi.In Kashmir, in the far north, 855 people (at least 167 attendees and people in contact with them) were being traced; only nine had been found. In Tamil Nadu, in the deepest south, the state was tracking at least 1,500 people, 300 of whom were still untraceable as of Tuesday night.Nearly 300 people from across Karnataka attended the congregation, state home minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Tuesday, creating a “dangerous situation”. Only 26 of the delegates (all from Bidar) have been traced. The Tumakuru preacher who attended the meet is learned to have had direct contact with at least 82 people, including 45 family members. The 26 delegates who were traced all tested negative, state health minister B Sreeramulu tweeted.In UP, police in 18 districts had tracked down 128 of the 157 people from the state who had attended the congregation. While 120 were found quarantined in Delhi, eight were traced to their native villages and cities and have been quarantined at home. A search is on for the remaining 29. The police also traced 95 others who had attended Jamaat event and were not on the list of 157 from UP shared by the Delhi police.A total of 185 people from Maharashtra had attended the congregation, officials said. Maharashtra minority development minister Nawab Malik, however, said he had learned “from the media” that 109 people from his state had attended. “I have asked officials to find out how many actually attended it. We are also talking to members of the Tablighi Jamaat to find out,” he said. The Ahmednagar district administration later said it had found 35 returnees, mostly foreign nationals.At least 20 villages across Bandipora, Pulwama, Shopian and Budgam in J&K have been identified as red zones and the administration has prepared a 50-page list of people from the UT who either attended the event at the Tablighi Jamaat markaz or had been on contact with attendees.Tamil Nadu health secretary Beela Rajesh announced that by Tuesday at least 67 of the Tablighi Jamaat cluster had tested positive, taking Tamil Nadu’s positive cases to 124, the third highest after Maharashtra and Kerala; 50 of these infections were recorded on Tuesday. The TN government also admitted that at least 300 of the 1,500 delegates from the state were untraceable. Chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami appealed to people to come forward for screening.A total of 1,548 people have been evacuated from the Nizamudddin markaz. Of this, 441 have been hospitalised because they exhibited symptoms while the remaining 1,107 people have been quarantined. Of those hospitalised, 24 have already tested positive for Covid-19 and, given the symptoms and history of direct contact with positive cases, doctors said there was a high likelihood of many others testing positive.The Delhi government’s daily report on Covid-19 cases in the state claimed the test reports of the Tablighi Jamaat followers hadn’t yet arrived yet and that an update was likely on Wednesday.Fifty-seven of the 107 people from MP who attended the TJ congregation have been identified; of them, 36 are from Bhopal. They, and the 20 foreigners from Malaysia and Indonesia, have given swab samples for tests, Bhopal collector Tarun Pithode said. “They (57 of the 107) have been quarantined after a health check-up. None of them has any symptom of Covid-19 infection,” Bhopal chief medical and health officer (CMHO) Sudhir Dheriya said.In Chhattisgarh, a rapid operation resulted in the identification of 101 people who had attended the TJ meeting. All those identified were quarantined or isolated at home. Nine people in Durg-Bhilai were the first to be put in a quarantine facility. Thirty others are in home isolation and 18 in quarantine in Bilaspur, 17 are in home isolation in Korba, 10 in Pendra, six each in Balodabazar-Bhhatapara and Sarguja districts, and five in quarantine in Koriya.In all, 17 people from five districts of Rajasthan attended the Tablighi Jamaat meet in New Delhi, according to an IB report. Home department officials said the whereabouts of these people remained unknown.. “These people are from five districts — Sikar, Jhunjhunu, Jaipur, Tonk and Jaisalmer,” said N L Meena, secretary, home department.West Bengal government sources said the state had specific information on 14-16 such people in Kolkata who were being traced and shifted to an isolation facility in Rajarhat later Tuesday.Thirteen people from Odisha were still inside the Tablighi Jamaat centre in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area, among the 1,000-odd still stuck there, and two were in hospital with cold and cough as symptoms. Three others who had returned to the state were quarantined at home on Tuesday. “The government has started monitoring the health of their family members and close contacts,” said Subroto Bagchi, the Odisha government’s spokesperson on Covid-19.The Tablighi Jamaat had held a three-day religious conference, the Aalami Ijtema, in Brahmabarda in Jajpur district from February 29 to March 2. This was also attended by delegates from Malaysia and Indonesia. Maulana Saad Kandhalvi of the Nizamuddin Markaz had conducted the mass “dua” — the final prayer before the conclusion of the conference.In Kashmir, a 10-year-old boy from Eidgah, old Srinagar, tested positive for Covid-19 at SKIMS Soura on Tuesday after hugging a person in a city mosque who had returned from the Tablighi Jamaat conference, sources in the boy’s family said. A SKIMS Hospital official confirmed that the boy had been infected.Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu government grappled with the complex task of tracking hundreds of delegates, their families and contacts, even as new cases from this cluster spiralled. The Telangana and AP governments, too, mobilised their health workers to track down the 1,500 Muslims who had participated in the conference. All of them had returned to the state.On Tuesday, TN chief secretary K Shanmugam told reporters in Chennai that at least 1,131 people returned from the TJ conference. “While 700-800 have been traced, 300 more remain untraceable,” said the officer, pleading helplessness as though they had their mobile numbers, the phones had been switched off. Police are trying to locate their addresses.Sources in the Union government said the 1,500 delegates from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, who attended the first three-day conference, held from March 14, took trains and flights back home.A group of 10 men from the Philippines had attended the congregation in Delhi, returned to Mumbai on March 10 and stayed at a mosque in Vashi. One of them fell ill and tested positive on March 13; he died on March 22.Over 200 people from Gujarat are thought to have attended the religious event. The elderly person (70) from Bhavnagar who succumbed to Covid-19 had participated in the congregation in Delhi along with a local maulvi.“We have quarantined nearly 30% of the people from the area of residence of the deceased and other positive cases,” Bhavnagar Municipal Corporation health officer RK Sinha said. While the participation in the meeting of 13 people from Bhavnagar and 76 from Surat was confirmed, another 100 from Ahmedabad are also suspected to have attended. In Surat, the municipal corporation was seeking out the 76 people who had attended the event.In the northeast, Meghalaya said the seven from the state who had gone for the Delhi congregation had not returned. The state also appealed to others who may have gone to Delhi to report voluntarily to the nearest hospital or call the 108 helpline, failing which they would face action. “Five of them are in Delhi, while two are in Lucknow,” assistant IGP GK Iangrai said in a statement issued here. Police officers said their counterparts in Delhi and UP had been told of the whereabouts of the seven.