Covid-19: City crosses 8-K mark; 137 discharged on Saturday

A growing hotspot for Covid-19 cases in one of the country’s largest and congested slums, Dharavi, recorded 89 cases on Saturday and a total of 221 cases in the

A growing hotspot for Covid-19 cases in one of the country’s largest and congested slums, Dharavi, recorded 89 cases on Saturday and a total of 221 cases in the past six days, bringing the tally on Saturday to 496. The area recorded the highest number of cases on Saturday.

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Overall, Mumbai recorded 547 cases of Covid-19, crossing the 8,000-mark, and 27 deaths were reported on Saturday. The total number of cases in the city has reached 8,172 and there have been 322 deaths so far. Of these, 1,704 people have recovered and were discharged. On Saturday alone, 137 recovered patients were discharged from hospitals across the city.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation attributed the rise in positive cases in Dharavi to aggressive contact tracing and pro-active screening through slum surveys of senior citizens, fever clinics, health camps, and municipal dispensaries.

According to civic officials of the G North ward (Dharavi, Dadar, Mahim), around 79, 000 people have been screened in Dharavi, of which, 25,000 were screened this week alone. Nearly 1, 920 were suspected to be positive and have been referred to institutional quarantines where they are tested for Covid-19. Mahim area also recorded 15 new positive cases on Saturday, taking the total number of cases there to 52. Dadar recorded 13 new cases, bringing the total to 46 till Saturday.

Meanwhile, data released by the BMC states that more than 1.20 lakh people across Mumbai had been home quarantined by the civic body till April 30, of which 35, 380 have completed their quarantine. The BMC also claims to have tracked 1. 57 lakh people through contact tracing; 26, 584 of them are high-risk contacts.

While people are home quarantined, some are also being quarantined in realty projects that are constructed but not yet sold. One of those is a Mhada building in Borivli where residents of some slum pockets were quarantined earlier this week. On Saturday, there was a ruckus at Sector 9 of a Charkop Mhada building after the slum dwellers who were shifted there had a quarrel with BMC officials over poor living conditions, including low-quality food, lack of hot water for those with throat ailments, etc. Mandar Musle, one of the people quarantined, said, “We cannot eat the stale food served to us. The building has one lift which they used to ferry a positive patient and the same lift is used to deliver the food. There are no proper arrangements at all.”