New Delhi: As the number of positive coronavirus cases witnessed a spike on Tuesday, the Indian government said that it was due to "lack of support in some locations", possibly hinting at the outbreak seen in the Miuslim-dominated Nizamuddin Markaz in the national capital where thousands of people had reportedly congregated.

Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Lav Agarwal, said on Tuesday that 227 new cases of coronavirus and three deaths have been reported in India in the last 24 hours. He added that the sharp increase in cases is because of "lack of support by people in some locations". India had reported 92 new coronavirus cases and four deaths on Monday.

Agarwal said there was lack of support in some locations and information were not being passed on or being passed on late which has led to this high number of cases in a single day.

He added that a lapse by a single person can cause grave damage by resulting in multiple transmissions.

Agarwal said the fight against Covid-19 is a collective exercise and everybody should cooperate in following the guidelines and maintaining social dsiatncing.

He said the Health Ministry, along with the states, is carrying out contact tracing so that suspected cases can be isolated as per the protocol with respect of positive cases.

The outbreak in the Nizamuddin area has led to 24 positive cases alone in Delhi while many others have been reported positive in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and other states. This single event may have caused the sharp spike in cases seen since yesterday.

As per information, nearly 1,800 people had assembled at the Markaz building in Nizamuddin for a religious congregation earlier in the month, of which a total of 1,033 people have been evacuated so far. Of these, 334 persons have been sent to hospitals and 700 have been sent to quarantine centres. Twenty-four cases have been found to be positive for coronavirus so far.

There were as many as 261 foreign nationals among 1,746 people lodged at the Tablighi Jamaat's Nizamuddin Markaz facility as on March 21, a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced 'Janata (peoples') curfew' across India to contain COVID-19 spread.

Additionally, the ministry said about 824 foreigners had been, as on March 21, doing Tabligh activities in various parts of the country.

The Home Ministry made the announcement after the headquarters of a religious sect in the Nizamuddin area emerged as one of the biggest coronavirus hotspot in India with 24 people testing positive and nearly 200 others showing symptoms. The authorities have begun evacuating the six-storey building of some over 1,000 others believed to have been exposed to the virus.

The building belongs to the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim sect that hosted this month its annual congregation with attendees coming in from several nations, particularly from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan before they spread out to other parts of the country such as Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh creating a web of close contacts that now threatens to create an explosion of cases in the country.