With Mumbai's graph steady, BMC turns focus on key western suburbs

BMC health workers conduct door-to-door screening near Sahar Road, Andheri East. Pic/ Satej Shinde

With 430 cases added in a week, K East ward (Andheri) is set to cross the 8,000 mark and a majority of the administrative wards in Mumbai have now have at least 5,000 cases each. As the city reported a little over 1,000 fresh cases on Sunday, four wards including K East, G North, R Central and R South currently have over 950 cases each while Mumbai has nearly 18,000 active cases.

Like in other parts of the city, civic officials said that the hotspots in K East ward are located in residential areas and there are few cases emerging from slum areas.

"There are more cases from residential buildings especially in Vile Parle East and around 10 per cent of the cases are from slum pockets. We are actively on the lookout for more cases and we have been carrying out antigen tests for all our staff as well," said Prashant Sapkale, assistant municipal commissioner of K East ward.

Door-to-door screening at Sahar Road

Currently, K East ward has 950 active cases and an average growth rate of 0.67 per cent which is less than the city's average.

Among other wards, R Central has consistently had a higher daily growth rate and has the highest number of active cases. While R Central ward has 1,177 active cases, R South has 977 cases and G North has 956 cases.

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With regard to R Central ward, Vishwas Shankarwar, deputy municipal commissioner said, "Patients take around 13-14 days to be discharged and the number of active cases is high due to the continuous spike in the number of daily cases in the last one month. While earlier we were getting 40-50 cases per day, the number has increased to 80-100 cases per day. Eighty per cent of these cases are from residential areas, possibly because people are not following social distancing norms and other safety regulations."

A COVID-19 testing camp in Kandivli.

He added that R South ward has started stabilising and extensive antigen testing is being done in the wards.

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