It is one of the most serious pandemic alerts in India. The death of a Sikh guru from Covid-19 and suspected of having been a "super propagator" has led to the quarantine of at least 15,000 people in the north of the country.
Back from Italy, the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe, and from Germany, the 70-year-old guru, Baldev Singh, went to preach in fifteen villages of the Sikh-majority Indian state of Punjab, before falling ill and die. He and his two collaborators - also contaminated - did not respect the orders for self-containment on their return and immediately began a round of preaching.
"Regular monitoring"
Special deliveries of food are made to each of the affected households, placed under a quarantine regime even stricter than the 21-day home confinement decreed Wednesday across the country by the government.
"The first of these 15 villages was cordoned off on March 18 and we estimate that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 people in the cordoned off villages", said Gaurav Jain, a high magistrate from the district of Banga, where the guru lived. "Medical teams are standing by and there is regular monitoring," he added.
Already 90 people who have been in contact with the guru have tested positive for the new coronavirus, said Vinay Bublani, a local police official. Test results from 200 other people are still pending.
Warning
This case astounded India. A Canadian-based Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala has released a song dedicated to Singh, viewed 2.3 million times in less than two days. "I have spread the disease (...) pacing the village like the shadow of death," he sings in particular. Punjab police chief Dinkar Gupta encouraged people to listen to him, hoping it would serve as a warning.
Second most populous country in the world after China, with 1.3 billion inhabitants, India has 873 confirmed cases of Covid-19 disease and 19 deaths, a figure much lower than that of many other countries affected by the pandemic . But experts believe that many cases go undetected due to lack of testing.
The locality of Bhilwara, in the state of Rajasthan (North-West), was placed under the same alert regime after the death of two patients out of 19 reported cases. The source of the source of contamination has not been determined, but a perimeter of one kilometer around the hospital in Bhilwara where patients of Covid-19 patients are treated has been declared a prohibited area.
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