Nizamuddin shrine turns Delhi into a COVID-19 cluster. The Govt must ban congregations altogether, monitor markets
Just when we were reading about Patient 31 in South Korea, who had infected thousands by interacting at a church congregation and sparked a swirling spiral of COVID-19 cases in that nation in just a couple of weeks, we have a super-spreader, actually spreaders, in Delhi. What is most worrying is that there could be many Patient 31s, not one, and as they moved to different parts of the country, they have carried the virus even to distant Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Faith is meant to give us courage, wisdom and hope and not lead us to irresponsible destruction in the time of a global pestilence. Faith is about the sincerity of prayer and creating hope, not a mindless pursuit of rituals codified by humans. Most significantly, no supreme being would reward human error. So ignoring all social distancing rules to avoid the Coronavirus, hundreds of pilgrims had been staying at Nizamuddin’s 100-year-old mosque complex, which has a six-floor dormitory, since a two-day gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat from March 13 to March 15. Some 280 were foreigners and had not been quarantined. The gathering, which featured sermons, was attended by Tablighi members from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan and Saudi Arabia. Members had also come from hotspots like England and France. Not only that, some of the top missionaries from Indonesia, with which we share easier visa rules, entered the country on a tourist visa, avoiding disclosure on the purpose or nature of their visit. Many of those who attended then travelled to other parts of the country, making contact-tracing an almost impossible job as they had bled into communities, families and society in general. For example, the Srinagar preacher, who died last week, had visited the Deoband seminary in Uttar Pradesh and on his return to Kashmir, held multiple gatherings. More than 100 people from Kashmir attended the gathering and a massive exercise is on to track them down. Some pilgrims who attended died in Hyderabad. To be fair to the police, they had information about a congregation on March 24, when around 1,200 people were inside the mosque complex, and had escorted them to the airport the following day. But on March 26, two days into the national lockdown, people started gathering at the mosque again without informing. When the police found out, already 2,000 people had assembled inside.
Of course, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has a tough job containing the entire Nizamuddin cluster, a rather crowded area of Delhi. For starters, he ordered a police case against the mosque administration over gross negligence. One shudders to think not how many are out there but how many they met and greeted. This costly human error means that the Government should crack down on all faith-based and any social congregations with an iron hand and maintain a strict vigil at all such potential convergence zones, social or religious, with military precision. This should include markets, too, given the overcrowding at Mangalore today. Massive surveillance and community testing along the lines of what South Korea carried out will now take place at Nizamuddin. In South Korea, they had tested all church members for the virus. So, even though the number of cases rose after the tests, it did manage to slow the rate of new cases. We may have identified the Nizamuddin cluster but what of the many returnees who have met people socially and in their families, blissfully unaware of being vectors and carriers? Despite more than 1,000 active cases and signs of local transmission, the Government claims there has been no community spread in the country. But it is no rocket science to understand that given India’s population density, this has happened already. Undoubtedly, the rising toll and confirmed cases on the tracker every day are causing large scale fear and panic. So what India needs now is an effective communication strategy like in South Korea and Japan, one which should say why the figures are climbing because of more testing and why protocols need to be followed to save lives. We must understand that we need test kits, protective gear and apparatus on a large scale to counter the monster that has swamped us. With economy in the doldrums, layoffs, State Governments halving salaries and the Centre expected to roll out welfare measures for mass treatment and care, we are already up to the gills. We have to ride the arc with patience and by doing the right thing. For God won’t forgive us either for doing the wrong one. Faith leaders should be used to propagate this message instead.
