COVID-19: 3 foreigners among 4 'Jamaat' members test positive

Four members of "Jamaat", three of them foreign nationals, tested positive for the coronavirus here on Thursday, taking the tally in Madhya Pradesh to 111, officials said here.

All four are believed to have attended a religious gathering in Delhi's Nizamuddin area last month.

They were staying in two mosques of the city, a senior official said.

However, it was not clear if they belonged to Tablighi Jamaat, the organisation which is in news after its mega congregation in Delhi last month turned out to be a hotspot for the spread of coronavirus in the country.

A large number of "Jamaat members" arrived in Bhopal recently and samples of 65 of them were sent for tests, Bhopal collector Tarun Pithode said in a statement.

The samples of four -- three foreign nationals and an Odisha resident -- tested positive for the viral infection, he said.

Among the three foreign nationals, two are from Myanmar and one from Ivory Coast, all of them living in Rahmaniya mosque in the Aishbagh area, a public relations department official said.

The fourth patient, a resident of Bhubaneswar, was staying in Ahata Rustam Khan Masjid in the Shyamla Hills area, the official said.

All four were quarantined at the Chirayu Medical College and Hospital here, he added.

The official said these four 'Jamaat' members were staying in Bhopal since the first week of March and were asymptomatic to the coronavirus and their samples were taken as a precaution.

They came to Bhopal in the first week of March from Delhi. They are living here since then.

"We came to know that they visited Tablighi Jamaat Markaz(centre) in Delhi and further details about their travel history are being sought, said a senior police officer on condition of anonymity.

Famed for the shrine of the 14h century Sufi mystic Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya, the south Delhi locality has emerged as an epicentre for spread of the coronavirus in different parts of the country after thousands of people took part in a Tablighi Jamaat congregation there from March 1-15.

Meanwhile, the district administration has declared areas falling within 1 km radius of both the mosques as containment zones.

People living in these zones would be screened and those who came in contact with the four COVID-19 patients will be quarantined, officials said.

Out of the total 111 coronavirus cases in the state, 82 have been reported from Indore, eight each from Jabalpur and Bhopal, six from Ujjain, two each in Morena, Shivpuri and Gwalior and one from Khargone, a health department official said.

Eight patients have so far died in the state - five from Indore, two from Ujjain and one from Khargone - the official added.