Fears of contagion in Mumbai slum
The Indian authorities had dreaded this moment. In late March, a 56-year-old shopkeeper from the sprawling Dharavi slum in Mumbai visited a local doctor with a cough and high fever.
He was prescribed cough syrup and paracetamol, but had no travel history abroad and was not considered high risk. His fever worsened until he was admitted to hospital, where he tested positive for coronavirus on March 29. Four days later he was dead.
Since then six more people have died in Dharavi – the neighbourhood that inspired the hit film Slumdog Millionaire – and at least 60 have tested positive, raising the nightmarish prospect of an outbreak in one of the biggest slums on earth.
More than a million people are crammed into this heaving enclave, cut through with open sewers, that spans less 2.5 square kilometres.
The Mumbai authorities moved to stem the outbreak, relocating dozens of residents out to isolation wards and forcing thousands into home quarantine. The idea of contact tracing in an area where people live cheek-byjowl and extended families share a single room looks all but impossible.
‘‘If the pandemic spreads here it could be out of control within days,’’ Peter Patel, 45, a Dharavi resident who worked at Mumbai airport before the lockdown, said. ‘‘Social distancing is impossible.
The community shares all essentials among themselves. Water from a single tap is shared among 50 residents. Every toilet is shared by 60 or 70 people.’’
Diseases such as typhoid and malaria regularly sweep the tight lanes and crumbling shanties, and the locals have been living in fear of the virus since the first rumours began to circulate.