Mumbai: The initial belief of the civic administration that only those with foreign travel history and belonging from affluent families are affected is proving false and increasingly the deadly coronavirus is eerily making its way into Mumbai's dense slum settlements and chawls.
Social distancing, self-isolation, hygienic toilets and even handwashing for many are impossible luxuries that the slum dwellers can afford.
The “two-metre distance rule” is almost impossible to hold in dense slum settlements where five to seven people live in a 10×10 room. Majority of slum dwellers even today use a common community toilet available in their locality.
Till two weeks back the BMC did not have any concrete plan to keep a check on the effect of the outbreak in slum areas. Until March 20, when a 68-yearold domestic help tested positive for coronavirus sparking panic across the city. Following these three people of her family were tested too and the entire slum she lived in was sprayed with disinfectant.
Another blow the civic body came when another woman, a 65-year-old woman from a Prabhadevi chawl tested positive. The woman who succumbed to the virus, ran a food mess in Prabhadevi and served lunch to many working in business centres and corporate houses in Prabhadevi, Elphinstone etc.
The woman had no foreign travel history and neither did she have any known contact with a corona-positive patient. Following this BMC started cluster screenings for slum dwellers where positive cases were reported.
"Tracing contacts of a coronavirus positive person in a slum is a mammoth task. These people cannot be home quarantined. The spread can be quick given the fact that there is one community toilet that is shared by 50 to a hundred people in some slum areas," said a senior BMC official.
To slow down and contain the outbreak in slums areas, BMC started marking containment zones, where they completely seal the affected area where positive cases have emerged. Currently, over 900 people from different slum areas in the city have been put under quarantine, of which around 200 are in Ghatkopar.
Slum areas where positive Coronavirus cases have been reported till date include, Janata Nagar, Worli Koliwada in Worli Badrekar wadi slum, Franciswadi and Koliwada in Jogeshwari, Shahu Nagar in Dharavi, Jambhlipada, Razzak chawl in Kalina, Mateshwari chawl in Andheri west among others.
" It is difficult, but we are not leaving it at that. We are monitoring as many slums dwellers as we can who are under our list of close contacts of positive cases reported. Our efforts now are to contain the spread," said Suresh Kakani, Additional Municipal commissioner of BMC.
