647 cases in 14 states linked to Nizamuddin conference
NEWDELHI/CHENNAI/LUCKNOW: India recorded 647 confirmed cases of Covid-19 across 14 states and Union Territories linked to a religious congregation in Delhi’s Nizamuddin that has emerged as the infection’s biggest hot spot in the country, the Union health ministry said on Friday.
The March congregation of Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamaat at its six-storey headquarters has pushed up the infection count in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, the government said.
“There are a total 2,301 coronavirus cases reported so far in India and 56 deaths have been reported from the country, of which 12 deaths have been reported since yesterday. As many as 157 patients have recovered,” said Lav Agarwal, the joint secretary of the Union health ministry, but refused to specify the number of fatalities linked to the Jamaat event.
The home ministry has already blacklisted 960 Jamaat members from abroad who attended the congregation. When asked if the government is planning to deport then, Punya Salila Srivastava, joint secretary in the Union home ministry, said, “The government is probing them under provisions of foreigners act and disaster management act. There is no deliberation of deportation at this stage.”
The cluster of infections that have spread across the country have forced authorities to call in the police and anti-terror squads to search for people who attended the meeting. A number of religious organisations – the latest being the Imarat Shariah in Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand — appealed to all delegates to come forward for health screening.
Among the worst affected is Tamil Nadu, where at least 100 of the 102 new cases on Friday were linked to the Nizamuddin event, state health minister C Vijayabaskar said. Of the 3,684 samples sent for testing so far, 411 have tested positive for the virus, while 2,789 were negative, he added.
In Uttar Pradesh, 47 of the 51 fresh cases on Friday were Jamaat members, additional chief secretary, home, Awanish Kumar Awasthi and principal secretary, health and family welfare, Amit Mohan Prasad said in Lucknow. The police sealed the Sadar Bazaar locality in the state capital to carry out house-to house searches, Awasthi added.
At the home ministry briefing, Manoj Murhekar of the Indian Council of Medical Research said guidelines for rapid antibody diagnostics are likely to be released by Saturday. “The modalities on which we are working include how to deploy the test in high risk areas, low risk areas, hotspots, etc,” he said.
Currently, India permits faster and cheaper antibody tests to check for Covid-19 in hot spots.
The test used now — PCR (polymerase chain reaction) — identifies the Sars-CoV-2 virus from throat or nasal swab samples of people with symptoms or high-risk individuals. The antibody tests are meant to identify people who have been previously infected but have developed immunity. While the PCR test results can take up to five hours, the antibody results can be available in 30 minutes.
Murhekar said around 66,000 individuals had so far been tested, of which 8,000 were tested on Thursday – the highest in a single day so far.
When asked if the ministry is deliberating on increasing tests, Agarwal said, “Testing has process and guidelines. Unnecessary testing for the sake of confidence building, especially when kits are limited, is not the right strategy. However, if we feel it’s needed, testing criteria can be revised. But, so far, no decision has been taken on that.”
Agarwal said about three million people downloaded the AarogyaSetu app, developed as a public-private partnership project to help people assess their risk catching the coronavirus infection, within 24 hours of launch.