Varanasi: With the detection of
five new Covid-19 cases, including three Tablighi Jamaat attendees, the number of hotspots of coronavirus went up from four to five in Varanasi on Friday. The administration has decided to make Nakkhighat the fifth coronavirus hotspot in the city after a 70-year-old resident tested positive.
District magistrate (DM) Kaushal Raj Sharma said, “As per the sample reports received from BHU laboratory on Friday, five more persons including three attendees of Tablighi Jamaat have tested positive for COVID-19. Among the three TJ attendees, a 55-year-old person belongs to Madanpura locality, a 40-year-old person is the native of Hyderabad and one 70-year-old man is resident of Nakkhighat locality.”
As many as 27 TJ attendees including these three persons, who had been quarantined at the health department training centre in Shivpur area, were found negative in the fist test. But, in second test the three were found positive, hence they were shifted to the isolation ward of the DDU district hospital. Other 24 TJ attendees have tested negative.
Besides, two more persons including a 19-year-old boy and a 21-year-old girl of a family living in Pandey Haweli have also tested positive. Five women from Telangana who had attended Tablighi Jamaat had stayed here in their house for two days. After the contact tracing of TJ attendees, the samples of the two were taken for testing.
They have also been shifted to the isolation ward of DDU district hospital. According to the DM, so far 14 positive cases were found in the district out of the five got cured, one died and eight are currently in the isolation ward.
The DM said that except the Nakkhighat resident, the four new positive cases are related to Madanpura hotspot. Pandey Haweli and the house of the new positive person and mosque are situated in the buffer zone of this hotspot. There are already two old positive cases in the Madanpura hotspot, and now the number of positive cases rose to six in this hotspot.
He said that Nakkhighat is being made a new hotspot with its buffer zone. Now there would be five hotspots and buffer zones in the district.