E-Paper
Four Mumbai men test positive for Covid-19 in Punjab’s Moga district
No Tablighi link, says civil surgeon; villages where they stayed have been sealed; contact tracing on in Bathinda and Faridkot, too
MOGA: Four residents of Andheri in Mumbai, who had recently travelled to Punjab via Delhi, tested positive for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Tuesday.
Moga civil surgeon Dr Andesh Kang said that these are the first Covid-19 cases from the district and contact tracing has been initiated.
“We had quarantined 13 people staying in a mosque at Chida village as 12 of them have travelled from Andheri to Moga via Delhi and stayed at many places in the state, including Bathinda and Faridkot districts. The four do not belong to the Tabhligi Jamaat and did not attend the Nizamuddin event,” he said.
Dr Kang said that the sample reports of the 13 people came on Tuesday in which the four men were found positive for Covid-19, while the other nine tested negative. “As a precautionary measure, we will keep the negative patients isolated and their samples will be sent for testing again,” he said.
The four positive men and nine other persons have been admitted to the isolation ward of the civil hospital.
The police have sealed all entry points of Chida and Sukhanand villages, where they were staying.
Senior superintendent of police Harmanbir Singh Gill said the 13 people, who belong to the Muslim community, were staying at a mosque at Chida, where they were quarantined for a couple of days.
“Twelve of them are residents of Maharashtra, while one is a Muslim preacher from Chida village. The group of twelve men reached Moga on March 22 and stayed at Sukhanand village before shifting to Chida village on March 25,” he said.
“They left from Bandra on March 12 and reached New Delhi on March 13, where they stayed at Kali Masjid till March 15. Later, they reached Bathinda and after that visited a mosque at Kotkapura in Faridkot district,” he added.
