Like in other parts of the country, the members of the Tablighi Jamaat who had attended the Jamaat congregations at its headquarters located in Nizamuddin area of Delhi have created a sudden spike in the cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in Uttarakhand. On Friday six followers of Jamat, residents of Dehradun and Bajpur in Udham Singh Nagar district, were found positive for the disease. A day earlier three Jamaat followers were found suffering from the disease. With them number of COVID-19 patients in Uttarakhand jumped to 16 on Friday. Out of these 16 cases in the State, nine are Jamaat followers. Two patients of the disease (IFS trainees) have recovered and been discharged from hospital.
The Health Ministry on Friday confirmed that 647 cases of COVID-19 in 14 states of the country are linked with the Tablighi Jamaat. In Uttarakhand the authorities have put 296 Jamat followers under institutional quarantine in different hospitals.
The director general (DG) of state health services, Dr Amita Upreti said that test reports of 98 suspected patients were received by the department on Friday and out of them six were found positive for the disease while 92 were negative for the disease. The department collected samples of 144 suspected patients on the day for test of COVID-19. On Thursday, 58 samples were collected from Nainital and 33 from Dehradun district for testing while 15 and 14 were from Udham Singh Nagar and Haridwar districts respectively.
The department has so far collected samples of 825 suspected patients and out of them 16 have been so far found positive for COVID-19 and the results of 138 samples are awaited. The health department has converted 15 major hospitals of the state into dedicated centres for treatment of COVID-19. A total of 152 suspected patients are in hospital isolation in the state. The authorities have sent 8557 people under home and institutional quarantine in different parts of the state.