450 delegates of Tablighi Jamaat from Tamil Nadu admitted in Delhi hospitals – Times of India

CHENNAI: Fifty people who attended a three-day Tablighi Jamaat conference at a mosque in Delhi tested positive for Covid-19 in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday triggering alarm across the country.
Tuesday saw the state’s Covid-19 count rise by 57 to 124 cases, the third highest after Maharashtra and Kerala, highlighting the threat of infection originating from the Tablighi Jamaat cluster.
The Centre and the governments of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are scrambling to prepare a national grid and map the footprints of at least 2,500 Tablighi Jamaat members who headed to their homes after two conferences, the last of which ended on March 23. Though most of them travelled to the southern states, these potential Covid-19 carriers have fanned out across the country, posing a nightmare for healthcare authorities. The Centre has asked all states and Union territories to trace and quarantine those who attended the Tablighi Jamaat conferences.
State health secretary Beela Rajesh said 300 of the 1,500 delegates from TN who went to the Delhi mosque were untraceable. She appealed to those ‘missing’ to come forward for screening. State chief secretary K Shanmugham said these people had switched off their phones and so the police were trying to trace their addresses. “We are doing all we can. About 400 people have remained in Delhi and the government there has screened and quarantined them,” he said. The Greater Chennai Corporation has sent 30 people, from various parts of the city, who took part in the conference, to hospitals for testing. District authorities all over the state too are identifying and screening those who went to the Delhi meet.
At least eight of those who went to Delhi have died of the infection — six from Telangana, and one each from Tamil Nadu and New Delhi.
Authorities believe they could have been infected by several missionaries from Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, who transited through the TJ headquarters in west Nizamuddin and spread out across the country, including Tamil Nadu, on a religious mission in February and March.
The Telangana and AP governments have mobilized their health workers to track down 1,500 Muslims who participated in a threeday conference held earlier at the same Banglewali Masjid in west Nizamuddin from March 14. Sources in the Union government said these 1,500 delegates from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana took trains and flights back home. Mapping their journey and tracing those with whom they came in contact besides their families is a logistical nightmare.
At TJ’s Nizamuddin headquarters, teams of health staff and police set about fumigating the area. “All the 450 Tamil delegates are in hospitals in Delhi,” said the TJ HQ spokesman Thamin Ansari. There were 800 others from UP, Jharkhand, Haryana and Andaman & Nicobar Island. “While some are in hospitals, others have been housed in private apartments and schools,” said Ansari.
In Kashmir, 855 people (at least 167 attendees as well as people in contact with them) were being traced; only nine had been found.
Nearly 300 people from across Karnataka attended the congregation, state home minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Tuesday, creating a “dangerous situation” in the state. Only 26 of the delegates (all from Bidar) have been traced, which leaves the remaining attendees and a vast network of their contacts. A Tumakuru preacher who attended the meet is learned to have had direct contact with at least 82 people, including 45 family members. The 26 delegates who were traced all tested negative, state health minister B Sreeramulu tweeted.
In UP, police in 18 districts had tracked down 128 of the 157 people from the state who had attended the congregation. While 120 were found to be quarantined in Delhi, eight were traced to their native villages and cities and have been quarantined at home. A search is on for the remaining 29. The police also traced 95 others who had attended Jamaat event and were not on the list of 157 from UP shared by the Delhi police.
A total of 185 people from Maharashtra had attended the congregation, officials said. Maharashtra minority development minister Nawab Malik, however, said he had learned “from the media” that 109 people from his state had attended. “I have asked officials to find out how many actually attended it. We are also talking to members of the Tablighi Jamaat to find out,” he said. The Ahmednagar district administration later said it had found 35 returnees, mostly foreign nationals.
At least 20 villages across Bandipora, Pulwama, Shopian and Budgam in J&K have been identified as red zones and the administration has prepared a 50-page list of people from the UT who either attended the event at the Tablighi Jamaat markaz (centre) in Delhi’s Nizamuddin West or had been on contact with attendees.

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