As Mumbai isolates, slums become Covid-19 hotspots
Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service
Mumbai, April 13
With Mumbai’s middle-class hunkering down in their gated housing societies following the 21-day lockdown, the Covid-19 virus is spreading through the city’s congested slums and chawls, according to information available from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
“Most of the new cases of people testing positive for the Covid-19 virus are from the slums and chawls in the more congested parts of Mumbai,” a health department official from the BMC said.
Of the 59 people who tested positive for the virus in the city on Monday, nearly all of them are from city’s slums or chawls, according to officials. The number was similar last week as well with 200 of the 217 people testing positive on Sunday hailing from the lower socio-economic category.
“The situation in the M (East) ward is worse than that of Dharavi,” says Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Azim Azmi who represents the Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar Assembly constituency.
The area, which is separated by the Thane creek from bustling Navi Mumbai, is home to the city’s dumping grounds and the abattoir where thousands of ragpickers scavenge for waste.
Civic officials say the number of people testing positive for the
virus in the area has raced past 80 over the past few days.
“Most of the cases were detected in the past few days after the BMC began testing people,” says Azmi. BMC officials say they have identified several slum clusters in the area like Shivaji Nagar, Baiganwadi and Lotus Colony where people have tested positive so far.
Nearly 80 per cent of the area’s 8 lakh people live in multiple slum clusters, according to data available from the BMC’s electoral rolls.
South Central Mumbai which is dominated by crumbling chawls dating back to the British-era are turning out to be the other major cluster reporting a large number of positive cases.
Worli-Koliwada, the mill lands of Prabhadevi and Elphinstone Road and the badlands of Nagpada, Madanpura, Dongri and Byculla are the other major areas to report a large number of positive cases. Mumbai’s E ward comprising Mumbai Central and Byculla alone account for more than 110 Covid-19 cases, according to civic officials.
Some of these neighbourhoods are as thickly congested as Dharavi with a population density of nearly 99,000 people per sq km, according to civic officials.
With one more death in Dharavi, Maha toll 150
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Awhad quarantines self
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