Update: 28-03-2020
At least 15,000 people who may have caught the coronavirus from the granthi. It has sparked one of India’s most serious alerts related to the pandemic and special food deliveries are being made to each household under even tighter restrictions than the 21-day nationwide stay-at-home order imposed by the government.
A coronavirus patient who died in Punjab on March 18 is believed to have spread the virus to at least 23 of the state’s 33 cases.
The 70-year-old man, Baldev Singh, a Granthi, had returned from a two-week tour of Germany and Italy and had defied self-quarantine rules to socialize heavily earlier this month.
He arrived on March 6 at Delhi and then drove to Punjab.
Officials tracking his movements and those he may have infected learned that he had attended an event at Anandpur Sahib on March 8-10 and returned to his village in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district.
He met close to 100 people before being tested positive for coronavirus. He and his two travel companions are believed to have visited 15 villages across the state.
Officials are going from village to village tracing every person who may have been exposed to COVID-19 because of the reckless socializing of the three men.
It is believed that the three caused coronavirus positive cases in Nawanshahr, Mohali, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, and Jalandhar.
