Coronavirus: Four from Sri Lanka who attended Tablighi Jamat gathering test positive in Haryana’s Nuh

Four men from Sri Lanka, who had allegedly attended the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in Delhi’s Nizamuddin last month, tested positive for Covid-19, in the Nuh district on Sunday, said officials. Eight people have been confirmed to have Covid-19 from Nuh and seven of them had visited the congregation in Nizamuddin, held mid-March.

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Virender Yadav, chief medical officer (CMO), Nuh, said: “Two of the patients were found near the Palwal border on March 31while entering Nuh and the other two were traced to Umra village. They were quarantined and their samples were collected which have come positive,” he said.

Police said all those who had attended the event and those who had come in close contact with them have been identified in Nuh. All samples will be collected by Sunday night, they added.

“There were 270 people who had attended the Jamaat in March, who then went to Palwal. They had started moving to Nuh after the lockdown was announced and were identified within a week,” said Yadav.

Meanwhile, the 600-bed Shaheed Hasan Khan Mewati Government Medical College at Nalhar in Mewat district has been declared an exclusive hospital for Sars-Cov-2 cases and more than 300 people have been admitted there in isolation and quarantine wards.

On Friday, three people from Kerala, who had allegedly attended the event last month, had tested positive in Nuh, said officials.

The superintendent of police of Nuh, Narender Bijarniya, on Sunday, said the four men from Sri Lanka were in touch with people from Palla and Rehna village in Nuh. “We have identified all the people and most of the samples have been collected. Our priority is to choose the highest risk persons. The teams start collecting samples by 8am and the process goes on until 11.30pm. All officials, including medical teams, are working round the clock,” he said.

Nuh had received test reports of 41 cases until Sunday, out of which eight have tested positive for coronavirus, including a truck driver who had visited Gujarat last month.

Most of the villages have been sanitised and the survey was completed by Sunday afternoon, said officials.

One of the medical officers, who is part of the sample collection team, said the villagers are not cooperating and that they find it difficult to get the tests done. They have reported the matter to the police regarding a few incidents where a police team accompanied them, said an officer on condition of anonymity.

The seven people who have tested positive for coronavirus had attended the event and stayed in Palwal for nearly 10 days before starting for Nuh, said the police.

Bijrania said the situation in Nuh is under control and all suspected people are quarantined and under surveillance. Police teams are keeping a close watch on the people hospitalised and their family members to ensure that the infected persons do not come in close contact with anyone else.