-COVID-19 fears
NEW DELHI: India sealed off the headquarters of a Muslim missionary group on Tuesday and ordered an investigation into accusations it held religious meetings that officials fear may have infected dozens of people with the coronavirus.
India has registered 1,251 cases of the coronavirus, 32 of whom have died. The numbers are small compared with the United States, Italy and China but health officials say India, the world’s second most populous country, faces a huge surge that could overwhelm its weak public health system.
One of the coronavirus hot spots that the government
of the capital, New Delhi, has flagged is a Muslim quarter where the 100-year-old Tablighi Jamaat group is based, after dozens of people tested positive for the virus and at least seven died.
Authorities said people kept visiting the Tablighi center, in a five-storey building in a neighborhood of narrow, winding lanes, from other parts of the country and abroad and it held sermon sessions, despite government orders on social distancing.
Hundreds of people were crammed into the group’s building until the weekend when authorities began taking them out for testing. More buses arrived on Tuesday to take them away to quarantine centers in another part of the city.–Agencie
