JOIN USIn 24 hours, Andhra-Telangana report 33 COVID-19 cases connected to Nizamuddin Jamaat
Andhra Pradesh with 21 fresh cases and Telangana with 15 have both recorded their biggest COVID-19 jump on Tuesday – with almost all connected to Delhi Nizamuddin’s Tabligh Jamaat meeting.
Telangana’s health minister Etela Rajender has informed that all 15 people who have tested positive– “are either those attended the Jamaat or their relatives.”
Out of the 21 fresh cases in AP, 18 are either Jamaat attendees or their relatives; two from Anantapuram district are close contacts of Karnataka returnees from Mecca, one is a returnee from Medina, the state’s COVID-19 bulletin revealed.
With this large addition in numbers, the total positive cases in Telangana as of Tuesday night is at 97, while in Andhra Pradesh it is 44.
Some of the patients who had previously tested positive in the two Telugu states were also found to have travel history to the Delhi Jamaat.
Telangana now has 77 active cases. While 14 were discharged after recovery, six were dead as declared by the Chandrasekhar Rao government on Monday night.
All the deceased six – the only deaths recorded in Telangana so far, due to COVID-19 – are returnees from the Delhi Jamaat. The six deaths from the minority community is also the highest COVID-19 toll in the country so far, related to Nizamuddin.
Earlier in the day, it was revealed that at-least 1800 people from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana had attended the Markaz of Tablighi Jamaat held in middle of March.
1030 are from Telangana with more than half among them – 603 –from the Hyderabad region. Over 770 persons are from Andhra Pradesh with Kurnool district alone accounting for 189.
122 among those detected from Andhra Pradesh are put in hospital quarantine, suggesting they could be with COVID-19 symptoms. Interestingly, these numbers widely reported in news-channels are put in circulation without official acknowledgment.
While the actual number of Nizamuddin attendees is anticipated to be more, a bigger fear is about their friends and relatives who might have gotten the virus from those infected.
Officials in the two states have set out on the herculean task of identifying, isolating and testing all these people. The challenge faced by the health machinery and the police was that many among the Markaz attendees were unrevealing about their probable symptoms and or travel history.
On Tuesday, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy has appealed to all the Nizamuddin travelers and their contacts to voluntarily come forward and avail free treatment. In Telangana, Rao made a similar appeal.
Reviewing the COVID-19 situation, Reddy asked officials to shift such people to quarantine centers in case of any symptoms. Reddy also ordered a house to house survey in urban areas