Just as strategists and experts had started believing that India may have flattened the Wuhan Corornavirus curve with the strict 21-day nationwide lockdown, the Tablighi Jamaat super spreader caused a Coronavirus explosion in India and pushed back our efforts in fighting the pandemic. Prior to the Tablighi Jamaat catastrophe, the number of confirmed cases in India were doubling in 7.4 days, however, the Tablighi Jamaat event had resulted in doubling them in 4.1 days.
India, after a spike in cases due to Tablighi Jamaat cases, for the first time in a while has seen a decline in the number of new cases in the last 24 hours, once again providing a glimmer of hope.
According to the numbers provided by the joint secretary (health) Lav Agarwal on April 7 (Tuesday), India reported 354 cases in the last 24 hours. “Till now 326 persons have been discharged after recovery. Till now there are 4,421 #COVID19 positive cases in the country, including 354 cases in the last 24 hours”, Luv Agarwal was quoted by ANI as saying.
https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1247473284238569473?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThis is a remarkable decline from the 693 cases in the previous 24-hour window. On April 6 (Monda), Lav Agarwal was quoted by ANI as saying: 693 new #COVID19 cases have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number to 4067 in India out of which 1445 cases are related to Tablighi Jamaat. 76 per cent of cases have been reported in males & 24 per cent in females: Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry.
https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1247111907493818370?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwRecently, economist Shamika Ravi, who is currently the Director of Research at Brookings India and former member, PM’s Economic Advisory Council, in a series of Tweets shared some graphical representation of statistical data showing a welcome turn in the Coronavirus growth rate in India where the curve seems to have flattened. She believes that even though it is a little too early to comment, but, if this trend continues, it will soon bring some relief for India.
The Indian authorities have been putting in tremendous amount of efforts to battle the pandemic especially after the Tablighi Jamaat event emerged as a super-spreader of the infection. According to latest numbers, more than 25,500 Tablighi Jamaat members and their contacts have been quarantined in the country till now after the Union and state governments conducted a “mega operation” to identify them, a senior Union Home Ministry official said on Monday.
The live cases of COVID-19 linked to Tablighi Jammat were reported in Andaman and Nicobar, Delhi, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
During the daily briefing, Joint Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava revealed that 1,750 foreign-based members of the Jamaat, out of the total 2,083, have been blacklisted till now by the Indian government.
The Union Home Ministry on Thursday blacklisted and cancelled the tourist visas of 960 foreign Tablighi Jamaat members for violating visa conditions by engaging in missionary activities while in India.
A couple of days ago, the role of Tablighi Jamaat in the spreading of the Wuhan Coronavirus across numerous states of India had come to light. Muslim clerics of Tablighi Jamaat organised a congregation, which was roughly attended by 1500 people both from various parts of the country as well as from abroad, in violation of the government’s lockdown orders, providing a conducive environment for the novel coronavirus to proliferate.