Delhi’s Nizamuddin a Covid- 19 hotspot At 32 per million, India lagging far behind on testing
CAPITAL CLUSTER States scramble to trace people from religious sect across India A similar congregation in Malaysia that began at the end of February has been linked to at least
NEW DELHI: Twenty-four people who took part in a religious gathering in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area have tested positive for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), state health minister Satyendar Jain said on Tuesday, while health officials scrambled to trace the footprints of other attendees who have spread out across the country amid fears of a possible explosion of the infection.
An estimated 1,500-1,700 people, including 227 foreigners, are believed to have attended the annual gathering at the six-storey hostel-like headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim sect, earlier this month, according to Jain.
He s a i d 7 0 0 p e o p l e who attended the congregation were quarantined while around 335 admitted to hospitals after showing signs of the fast-spreading infection caused by the SarsCov-2 virus.
A senior bureaucrat in southeast Delhi, where the building is located, said officials will locate, identify and facilitate the quarantine of all Indian citizens who attended the event, hinting at a massive and challenging exercise that will have to cover several states.
“The gathering size was more than 1,500, which include more than 200 foreign nationals…this is the biggest local coronavirus operation in Delhi. We have to first draw out a list of people. We are on it,” the bureaucrat who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Jain said organisers of the gathering flouted Delhi government’s orders issued to stop the spread of Covid-19.
“The organisers have committed a grave crime. I have written a letter to LG (lieutenant governor) Anil Baijal to take strictest action against the organisers. We have given directions to the police to lodge and FIR as well,” Jain said, a day after the Delhi government ordered the filing of the first information report.
Markaz Nizamuddin, the place where a religious congregation left several people affected with coronavirus, said it has not violated any provision of the law and offered its premises for setting up a quarantine facility. Markaz
NEWDELHI: Nearing a month after the wave of Covid-19 infections began in India, testing in the country is a 60th of that in the UK, a 82th of that in the US, and a 241th of that in South Korea, highlighting an area where India continues to lag.
Although India has opened up testing to private laboratories — 47 of them — in addition to 127 government laboratories, questions remain about the availability of testing kits. On March 28, Dr Navin Dang, who runs Dr Dangs Labs, one of the private laboratories allowed to conduct Covid-19 tests, highlighted this gap.
Worryingly, questions also remain about whether the I ndian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has set unrealistic standards for testing kits. According to its guidelines, ICMR allows US FDA approved kits and European Ce-mark kits to be used after due approvals; for other commercial kits, it said that approval would be granted only to those who have a 100%
Covid-19 testing in India is a 60th of that in the UK, a 82th of that in the US, and 241th of that in South Korea India has tested
UK has tested 127,737 people —
US has tested 851,578 people — concordance among both true positive and true negative samples (sensitivity and specificity) — a condition t hat several experts have described as unrealistic and restrictive.
Of the 17 commercial kits sent for approval so far, only four have cleared the parameters.
R Gangekhedkar of ICMR said on Sunday that the capacity utilisation of the body’s network of labs is only 30% — indicating that states can scale up tests. Gangekhedkar also said there