More Tablighi returnees test positive for COVID-19 in southern states

Most southern states continued to witness surge in their respective COVID19 numbers for the second day in a row on Thursday, with a majority of the infected being returnees from the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in a New Delhi locality last month, officials said. Governments in Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, among the badly affected with virtually all of the new patients having link with the Nizammudin West event in Delhi, stepped up efforts to identify all those who participated in the religious meet and screen them.

With 75 new cases -- all but one had taken part in the Tablighi event, Tamil Nadu on Thursday moved ahead of Kerala (256 active cases) to the second spot in the country with a total of 309 COVID-19 patients behind Maharashtra (416). On Wednesday, Tamil Nadu had reported a whopping 110 people, all returnees from the jamat event, testing positive.

Among the 21 fresh positive cases reported from Kerala on Thursday, two had attended the Nizamuddin congregation. Twenty-seven fresh cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Telangana on Thursday, taking the tally in the state to 154 with the active cases at 128, state Health Minister E Rajender said.

The state has seen the most fatalities with the COVID-19 toll rising to nine in the state late on Wednesday with the death of three more persons who returned from the Delhi congregation. All the nine deceased had a history of attending the religious meeting at Nizamuddin in south Delhi.

Altogether, 17 people had been discharged. The Karnataka government reported 14 new COVID-19 cases, including ten men, who had attended the Tablighi congregation, and a woman who had contact with a Delhi returnee, on Thursday, taking the total to 124.

State Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey said based on inputs given by police and central government, nearly 1,000 people linked to Tablighi Jamat, have been screened till Thursday morning and swab samples of more than 200 had been drawn and sent for tests. "...out of nearly 100 preliminary test results, 11 from Bidar dist are positive. Contact tracing and isolation works are already on," he said in a statement.

Nizamuddin West has emerged as an epicentre for the spread of coronavirus in different parts of the country after thousands of people took part in the Tablighi Jamaat congregation from March 1-15 and returned to their states. Tamil Nadu, which like many states has put in an aggressive mechanism to tackle the spread of coronavirus, however continued to witness steep increase in daily addition to the aggregate number of positive coronavirus cases.

Of the 75 new cases reported, as many as 74 were returnees from the recent congregation held in Nizamuddin and another was a contact of a person infected earlier, Health Secretary Beela Rajesh said. A total of 264 people among those who had attended the religious conference from the state in the national capital have tested positive for the contagion, she told reporters.

Andhra Pradesh too saw an upswing in the number, with 32 coronavirus cases being detected since Wednesday night, taking the state's tally to 143. All the fresh cases in the state too were related to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in New Delhi, from where COVID19 has been spreading fast.

"About 16 per cent of those who attended the Jamaat event tested positive in the state," the state nodal officer for COVID19 Arja Srikanth said. Also, 20 of their contacts too got afflicted with the disease.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said at least 157 people from the state had participated in the jamaat event and that they were all under observation. In the union territory of Puducherry, one more person tested positive for the coronavirus, taking the total number of active cases to four, including three returnees from the Delhi meet.