Two young siblings, including one aged eight-months and the other seven, have become the latest positive cases of Covid-19 in Srinagar Thursday. The eight-month-old is probably the youngest novel coronavirus patient in India so far.
The Jammu and Kashmir government spokesperson Rohit Kansal today took to Twitter to announce: “Two more positive cases in Srinagar. Siblings (7 years old and 8 months old)- grandchildren of a confirmed case from Srinagar with travel history to Saudi Arabia who had tested positive on 24th. Total number of active positive cases now 11”.
#COVID19#JammuAndKashmir
— Rohit Kansal (@kansalrohit69) March 26, 2020
Two more positive cases in Srinagar. Siblings (7 years old and 8 months old)- grandchildren of a confirmed case from Srinagar with travel history to Saudi Arabia who had tested positive on 24th. Total number of active positive cases now 11. @diprjk
The two children are the grandchildren of the Saudi-Arabia return 65-year-old Islamic preacher who had succumbed to the infection in Srinagar. The man, who was an Islamic preacher affiliated to the Tableeghi Jamaat, was tested positive for COVID-19 on March 24 (Tuesday) and died in hospital this morning. This is the first coronavirus death in Kashmir.
The entire neighbourhood has been sealed by the police and contact tracing is underway.
Official sources say over 70 people, including seven doctors, had come in contact with him and at least four have tested positive so far. All the rest have been shifted to different quarantine facilities.
The man had an extensive history of travel in the country and travelled to various different parts of the country before returning to Kashmir on March 16. The organisation he belonged to is headquartered at Banglwali Masjid in Delhi’s Nizamuddin neighbourhood and has a vast network of mosques around the world.
The man had also visited Andaman and Nicobar and a mosque in Jammu’s Samba before flying to Srinagar. Back in Srinagar, he visited a neighbourhood mosque and the Jamaat centre in Sopore in north Kashmir, all the while coughing and sneezing.
It is also reported that of Jammu and Kashmir’s eleven Wuhan Coronavirus patients, five of them had attended a religious event where this deceased religious preacher was also present. It is, however, not yet clear how this person contracted the virus.
With the two new cases, the total number of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in Jammu and Kashmir now stands at 11. All these 11 patients are active cases.
The Wuhan Coronavirus has claimed 13 lives in India with the positive cases going up to 649. Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a full lockdown of India in the wake of the deadly Wuhan Coronavirus spreading across the country.
