Tablighi’s have not been super spreaders just in India, but in other parts of the world too

New Delhi, Apr 03: Names misspelt or written wrong in the registers. It has become a Herculean task for the agencies to track down the Tablighi Jamaat members, who attended the congregation at Nizamuddin last month.

Officials tracking the case say that the congregations by the Jamaat has created havoc not just in India, but in several other parts of the world as well.

About 9,000 Tablighi Jamaat members and their primary contacts have been quarantined till now across the country in view of the coronavirus infection. However tracking these persons has been anything but easy. The Jamaat has made an entry of all the names in its registry. However in most cases, the name does not match with the passport because it is either written wrong or misspelt.

On Thursday Punya Salila Srivastava, a joint secretary in the Union Home Ministry, told reporters during a daily briefing that out of about 2,000 such Tablighi Jamaat members in Delhi, 1,804 have been shifted to quarantine centres while 334 symptomatic persons have been admitted to hospitals.

She said these numbers are a result of a "massive effort" that was undertaken by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in coordination with states to identify Tablighi Jamaat workers or members in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Officials in the Home Ministry tell OneIndia that the problem is multi-fold. The first problem is tracking these persons. Next comes the issue of finding out who all they have come in contact with, their places of visit and also travel routes. We are doing the best we can and I could say so far so good, the officer cited above said.

India is not the only country in which the Talbighi followers have become super spreaders. In Malaysia there was a gathering of the Jamaat in February and at least 600 cases are linked to it. In Pakistan, there was a congregation of the Jamaat in March. Nearly 2.50 lakh people attended the congregation. The coronavirus infections thanks to this congregation has been linked to cases in Palestine, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan too.

Nearly 65 per cent of the new all India cases are linked to the event that took place in the city. At least 295 delegates from across the country who had attended the religious congregation at Delhi last month have tested positive, accounting for more than 60 per cent of the 485 confirmed cases across the country recorded till Thursday.

The nation wide count has crossed 2,000 with Delhi (141), Maharashtra (88) and Tamil Nadu (75) adding to the numbers in a big way.

On Thursday Delhi led the tally with 129 of the 141 cases being linked to the Jamaat. The states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka accounted for 143 Talblighi delegates of their contacts testing positive.

In Tamil Nadu 74 of the 75 cases comprised Tablighi delegates or their contacts. In Telangana the number stood at 26 of 27 while in Karnataka it was 11 of 14. All 32 cases reported in Andhra Pradesh were linked to the Jamaat.

In the states of Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur all the cases reported were linked to the congregation.

In Rajasthan out of the 13 cases, 3 were linked to the Jamaat while in UP the number was 2 out of ten. In Maharashtra, 8 out of the 88 cases were linked to the Tablighi Jamaat.