Now, it is confirmed that the huge rise in the number of positive cases for Coronavirus in Andhra Pradesh is only due to large scale returnees from Tablighi Jamaat conference held at Nizamuddin in New Delhi between March 15 and 17.
It was revealed during the review meeting convened by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy at his Tadepalli camp office on Monday.
Out of 266 positive cases reported till date, as many as 243 cases were of those who had gone to Tablighi Jamaat conference and their primary contacts.
The officials told the chief minister that all of them had been traced and tests had been conducted on almost all of them.
“After that, we shall conduct door-to-door survey and if anybody is found to have any symptoms, we shall conduct tests on them,” they told Jagan.
Of the total number of positive cases recorded till now, only 23 patients – 11 foreign returnees, six of their contacts and another six locals, who came from the other states. All the remaining patients were Jamaat returnees and their direct contacts.
The government has disclosed the details, including their age, gender and district, of as many as 190 patients who had connections with Jamaat meeting and said details of others would be disclosed in due course.
The health department has already identified red zones and they would be divided into clusters, where random tests would be conducted.
On Monday, AP reported two more deaths -- one was that of a 64-year old man from Anantapur, who was a contact of his kin having travel history to Mecca and another that of 55-year old man from Machilipatnam in Krishna district.
The state also recorded 14 more positive cases for Covid-19 that were reported from different parts of Andhra Pradesh since Sunday night till 9 am on Monday, taking the total number of positive cases in the state to 266.
On Sunday, Andhra Pradesh recorded a huge number of 60 positive cases for Covid-19 on Sunday.