11 people who attended Nizamuddin congregation from Bidar district test COVID-19 positive

Bidar district has emerged as a new COVID-19 hot spot with 11 people from the district who returned from the Tablighi Jamaat congregation at Nizamuddin Markaz Masjid in New Delhi testing positive for COVID-19 on Thursday.

The number of positive cases reported from a single district at one go is a cause for concern for Kalyana Karnataka, particularly in Bidar and Kalaburagi districts, which have a large presence of Muslims.

The administration now has a big challenge of containing community transmission. The district shares the border with neighbouring Telangana and Maharashatra, which have reported the country's highest number of coronoavirus positive cases.

Bidar deputy commissioner Dr H R Mahadev told DH that throat swab samples of 26 people who returned from a religious congregation were sent for tests, of which 11 tested positive.

All the 26 have been isolated at the Bidar Institute of Medical Sciences, he explained.

Of the 11 positive cases, nine are from Bidar city, while one is from Basavakalyan and the other from Mannaekhelli in Chitaguppa taluk. The reports of 16 people including a person from Kapalapur village in Bidar taluk who returned from abroad and another man who came to Bidar via Hyderabad to go to Kalaburagi, were negative, he told.

Information is being gathered on the travel history of the infected. About 33 family members of the infected people have been kept under strict quarantine at the Child and Mother Hospital located in the old city. An area five km radius in the old city has been declared a buffer zone, Mahadev said.

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One death

A 62-year-old man who returned from the religious congregation at Delhi's Nizamuddin died on Wednesday night at a hospital in Hyderabad. But doctors did not confirm whether he died due to COVID-19.

The deceased is a resident of Singarbhad of the city. Two sons of the deceased claimed that their father has died of typhoid. However, violating the COVID-19 protocol norms, the last rites of the deceased were performed at Astur near Bidar taluk in the wee hours of Thursday.

Reliable sources said a pit was dug by an earth mover in the presence of the deceased's two sons and the body was buried with the help of a crane. Some senior officials who were present ensured that the last rites were performed in a scientific manner.

Deputy commissioner H R Mahadev said the throat swab sample of the deceased tested negative when it was collected in Bidar. "We have no official information on the cause of his death from the doctors of Telangana," he told.