71% Tablighis, contacts in Haryana cured, likely to be sent home from quarantine by mid-May

Of the total 147 Tablighis and their contacts who were found to be positive for Covid-19 in the state since March 31, as many as 105 have been cured and shifted from hospitals to quarantine facilities, senior doctors said. They are likely to be sent home by mid-May, after the mandatory 14-day observation .

“After the first negative report of a person, the second sample has to be taken within 72 hours and if it is found to be negative again, it is mandatory to keep the person in 14-day self-quarantine or a similar facility. Since most of them are from other states, they are kept here in observation,” a senior doctor said.

On March 31, the state government had launched a massive exercise to identify persons with Tablighi Jamaat links and quarantined about 1,600 of them in their respective areas, mainly in Nuh, Palwal, Gurugram and Faridabad. Of these, 147 were later found positive and these four districts were marked as red zones (or hot spots). Stating that 105 of them have now been cured, doctors said that only about 40 persons with Tablighi link are among the active cases.

Nuh has so far had 57 positive cases, Gurugram, 51, Faridabad and Palwal, 29 each, some of whom, especially in Gurugram, are not Tablighis or their contacts, and had foreign travel history.

Stating that some Tablighis and their contacts had been cured, health minister Anil Vij, said that they were in quarantine and observation as per the standard operating procedure in the context. “We do not see the caste or creed of a person as our job is to cure a patient. They too would be discharged after mandatory observation period,” he added.