Arunachal Pradesh became the fourth state in the northeast to record a case of coronavirus on Thursday morning with a 31-year-old man from Wakro in Lohit district, who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event at Nizamuddin in Delhi, testing positive.
The northeast region now has a total of 20 Covid-19 patients—18 of them linked to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation.
“Seven people from Arunachal Pradesh had attended the Nizamuddin event. Test result for one of them, which was carried out at ICMR lab in Dibrugarh, Assam, has come positive for Covid-19,” state health minister Alo Libang told HT.
Of the seven suspects, one is from Lohit district and the rest are from Namsai. All of them had returned to Arunachal Pradesh on March 19 after attending the congregation held between March 13 and March 15.
“The person found positive is a 31-year-old from Wakro in Lohit district. The patient, as well as 6 others who travelled with him, are in quarantine at present. Test results of the six others are awaited,” Libang said.
Arunachal Pradesh doesn’t have a testing facility for Covid-19 at present and samples from the state are tested at ICMR, Dibrugarh in Assam. Till Wednesday, 58 samples had been collected in the state and sent for testing.
The first Covid-19 positive case in the northeast was detected in Manipur, when a 23-year-old student who returned from UK was found positive. It was followed by a 50-year-old pastor from Mizoram who had returned from the Netherlands last month.
Assam with 16 positive cases has the highest number of patients in the region. All of them had attended the Tablighi Jamaat gathering last month. On Wednesday, Manipur reported its second positive case—a person who had attended the Delhi congregation.
No positive case has been recorded in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya yet.
