Thousands of villagers in Punjab’s rural areas falling in different districts are being quarantined as a case surfaced recently didn’t have any travel history outside India. Nor was he a contact of any of the already identified Covid-19 patients.

Not only that, the 55 year old man from Village Chatamli in Tehsil Morinda who tested positive for Covid-19 on 3 April, was the first patient in the Ropar district. Husband of ex-Sarpanch of the village, the patient is diabetic with a history of hypertension. He got himself admitted to Civil Hospital in Phase-6, Mohali from where he was referred to Chandigarh’s Government Super Speciality Hospital.

The case threw the local administration into a tizzy as they went on about ascertaining the source of local transmission. The family of seven, including two members over 80 years of age, was isolated and their samples also taken for testing.

The patient’s 52 year old wife and 16 year old son also tested positive yesterday (5 April). Rest of the family’s samples came out negative.

“Does not have travel history and did not go to Holla Mohalla. Apparently there was a health camp in the village by a Christian Missionary Foundation—Pastor Randeep Mathews and there was a team of doctors and few foreign nationals as tourists,” informed Karan Bir Singh Sidhu in a series of tweets.

“District Administration is in contact with the Pastor, who brought 20 foreign nationals to this village. Apparently they went to few other neighbouring villages too—trying to locate their passport numbers,” added Sidhu who is an officer of the Indian Administrative Service of 1984 batch and is currently posted as the Special Chief Secretary, Punjab. He quoted details of the case almost verbatim from The Indian Express report.

Mathews is Senior Pastor of New Life City Church and has been conducting medical camps in partnership with Christian evangelical organisation, Impact Nations, which has headquarters in the United States and Canada. In 2014, Impact Nations‘s website had claimed that it baptised over 80,000 people in North India. In 2016, it boasted in a Facebook post that House churches (comprising of 50 members on average) stood at 11,000 in numbers, mostly in Punjab.

Randeep Mathews is a key partner of Impact Nations and its India representative. His photos of distributing food packets to villagers in Punjab from last week are up on the Impact Nations website already. A team of foreigners usually come to India in March on a ”journey of compassion” and visit various rural areas and organise medical camps.