Second virus case linked to Dharavi worries officials
MUMBAI : Mumbai’s overworked public health workers have a new, daunting challenge on their hands--Dharavi.
After a 56-year-old garment shop owner died of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India’s largest slum on April 1, two teams of 50 officers and volunteers arrived in Dharavi to spread awareness of Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes the disease, and to quarantine 70 high-risk residents of the eight-building Slum Rehabilitation Authority complex in which the man stayed. The neighbourhoods also has 91 shops, all of which have been ordered shut. The next day an additional 2,500 people were home-quarantined.
On Thursday morning, a second case emerged – a municipal conservancy worker from south Mumbai who was assigned to the area tested positive.
MUMBAI : Mumbai’s overworked public health workers have a new, daunting challenge on their hands--Dharavi.
After a 56-year-old garment shop owner died of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India’s largest slum on April 1, two teams of 50 officers and volunteers arrived in Dharavi to spread awareness of Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes the disease, and to quarantine 70 high-risk residents of the eight-building Slum Rehabilitation Authority complex in which the man stayed.
The neighbourhoods also has 91 shops, all of which have been ordered shut. The next day an additional 2,500 people were home-quarantined, and will probably be tested for the virus.
On Thursday morning, just as the two teams plus 800 more community health volunteers were getting ready for another busy day in Dharavi, a second case emerged – a municipal conservancy worker from south Mumbai who was assigned to the area tested positive for SarsCov-2. Twenty of his friends and co-workers were quarantined.
Neither the garment shop owner nor the conservancy worker has a recent travel history, according to information released by the city’s health department.
“It is going to be an uphill task identifying asymptomatic patients in an area that has more than 850,000 people,” said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the officer in charge of the city’s G ward, where Dharavi is situated.
It is not just about Dharavi’s population. Its inhabitants live in some of the most cramped spaces in the country.
In an area measuring 2.1 sq km, the slum has over 57,000 shanties, huts and small flats, almost all of them illegal.