COTABATO City -- Nineteen Filipinos, who attended the recent tabligh gathering in Malaysia, have been placed under medical quarantine there after testing positive for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the National Commission on Muslim Filipino-Region 12 (NCMF-12) said today.

A total of 215 Filipinos attended the convention held from Feb. 27 to March 1 at the Jamek Sri Petaling mosque near Kuala Lumpur -- 115 from Lanao del Sur, including Marawi City, and 100 from Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and other parts of the country.

Mama Sinsuat, NCMF-12 director, said the Malaysian Ministry of Health informed him about the condition of the 19 Filipinos, all Muslims.

“There was no clearance for them to go back after medical check-ups found them positive for Covid-19,” he said.

Two of the Filipinos who attended the gathering and had gone back were earlier found positive of Covid-19. One of them died in Marawi City a week ago.

Three others were classified as “persons under investigation” (PUI).

The Malay Mail, a Malaysian newspaper, earlier reported that 513 Malaysians who attended the gathering had tested positive of the virus.

The tabligh convention drew around 16,000 participants from different countries, 14,500 of them Malaysians.

Sinsuat said the Malaysian Ministry of Health provided him the names of 14 of those who attended from the Philippines.

He added he would relay to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Barmm) the names for them to help in the contract tracing.

Barmm has a list containing the names of the 196 who have returned to the country but still being validated.

Sinsuat admitted they were having difficulty tracing the tabligh attendees “because the event was informal and that there was no coordination conducted by the delegates with the NCMF.”

Even the head of the delegation has not been identified because there was a lack of coordination, he said.

Sinsuat said most of the tabligh missionaries from the Philippines traveled to Malaysia by sea through the backdoors in Tawi-tawi and Palawan. (Ferdinand Cabrera of Mindanews)