Ward health official says while six Covid cases have been reported from the slum area, all of them are scattered
A woman looks out from a sealed building in the city in May last year. File pic
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has declared a slum area in D ward as a containment zone (CZ), but only on paper. The ward health official said while six cases had been reported from the slum, they were all scattered, so access to the area had not been closed. The city currently has 37 sealed buildings and 1,387 sealed floors.
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“The area comprises small slum pockets like Sagar Nagar, Mata Parvati Nagar, Prem Nagar, Shivaji Nagar and Bhavani Mata Nagar. These areas are adjacent to a couple of skyscrapers near Banganga. The access to the whole area hasn’t been closed yet as the cases are scattered. However, it has been declared as a CZ,” said Dr Suresh Uchle, medical officer of D ward. As per the civic body’s rules, any slum area that has more than five cases is declared a CZ.
Though over 90 per cent of the cases are from high-rises, slums are seeing a surge too. “The overall cases have increased a lot, hence the proportion of cases in slums compared to the total is not much,” said a civic health official. “In G South ward, which comprises Worli, Parel and Mahalaxmi, of the total 159 cases, seven were reported from slums between December 1 and 20. Of the 240 cases reported in the past week, 13 are from slums,” said Dr Devendra Golhar, medical officer of G South ward.
Even in G North ward, Dharavi has been witnessing an increase in cases since last week. The area reported a total of 23 cases between December 21 and 27. The active cases increased from 11 to 27 within the same period. Meanwhile, most of the cases are still being reported from high-rises. A building is sealed if it has more than five cases and a floor is sealed if it just has one case.
37
No. of sealed buildings in the city
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