Dharavi transit camp: Centre recommends increasing testing and bed capacity

Covid-19 update: Dharavi has recorded 180 Covid-19 positive cases and 12 deaths so far. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) authorities said that around 40,000 people from the area have been screened to date.

The five-member Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) on Wednesday visited densely populated Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum and one of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) hotspots in the city, to assess the on-ground situation and suggested a few measures to the state government to contain the viral outbreak.

Aerial view of Asia's largest slum Dharavi in Mumbai, India, on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. (Pratik Chorge/HT Photo)

The team advised the Maharashtra government to increase the number of people in institutional quarantine facilities by ramping up the bed strength from existing 1,200 to 2,000 and to conduct more aggressive testing. State public health minister Rajesh Tope, accompanied the team, headed by Manoj Joshi, additional secretary, Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries, to Dharavi.

Tope told media persons that the Central team had advised increasing both testing and quarantine facilities in the congested slum. “We’ll increase the quarantine facility from 1,200 to 2,000. We’ll put up tents, if required, to quarantine people. We’ll conduct more tests as well,” Tope told reporters.

Dharavi has recorded 180 Covid-19 positive cases and 12 deaths so far. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) authorities said that around 40,000 people from the area have been screened to date.

“Dharavi recorded its first Covid-19 case on April 1. The team expects that the spike in the number of new cases could occur anytime soon. They suggested that the test counts must be increased along with making more beds available at institutional quarantine facilities,” the official added.