Pakistan is looking for tens of thousands of faithful who participated in a giant tablighi rally, a rigorist Muslim movement, before dispersing in and out of the country and spreading the new coronavirus, AFP learned on Saturday from the authorities. At least 41 people have died from the new coronavirus in Pakistan, a country of 200 million people with a poor health system.
Read also: LIVE - Coronavirus: new death record in the United Kingdom, including a 5-year-old child
"Authorities in all districts (of the country) are trying to locate those who attended the event," the office of the chief of administration in Lahore, the capital of eastern Pakistan, told AFP. which was held from 10 to 12 March an itjema, a tablighi rally in which "around 100,000 people" participated. Some 7 to 8,000 participants have so far been quarantined in the Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital, including more than 900 foreigners - Chinese, Nigerians, Afghans and even Turks -, he said.
A member of the government of the neighboring province of Sindh (South) reported "300 to 400 pilgrims (tablighis) wandering there" and a few hundred confined. He deplored the non-prohibition of the Tablighi rally, when it was called to become "a major source of the spread of the infection" .
Read also: Covid-19 entered the Gaza enclave
At least 154 tablighis have so far tested positive for Covid-19 in Punjab and Sindh, of which at least two have died after participating in itjema, authorities said. The first two officially reported cases of coronavirus in the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip had taken part in the Pakistani rally, according to the Palestinian representation in Islamabad. The March rally, attended by pilgrims from 70 countries, was interrupted after two days, when it was to last five, according to a member of the Tablighi movement, an international and rigorous movement of Muslim missionaries.
In India, a tablighi rally in New Delhi provoked a hunt for its participants, after at least ten Indian tablighis died from Covid-19. Another rally in March in Kuala Lumpur had also resulted in hundreds of infections in half a dozen countries, including Malaysia.
Read also: India faces 1.3 billion people in the face of the coronavirus