As Dharavi Flattens COVID Curve, Temporary Hospital To Close; Pvt Hospital Also To Be Returned

In the past 24 hours, Dharavi, Asia's largest slum recorded just three new cases of COVID-19, taking the total confirmed infections so far to 2,740.

Of 2,740 COVID-19 patients recorded in the slum- dominated area, 2,383 have already recovered.

BCCL

As of Friday morning, there are only 97 active coronavirus cases in Dharavi, which was once the worst affected in Mumbai.

As the number of active cases falls, the BMC has decided to shut down a 200-bed field hospital it had set up in May for COVID-19 treatment.

It was set up on an unused 4,000-sqm plot belonging to the MMRDA that was reserved for a parking lot for Maharashtra Nature Park at a time when COVID-19 cases were spiraling out of control.

The BMC which at that point in time was running out of beds for COVID-19 patients had also acquired the 51-bed Sai Hospital in Dharavi, which was converted to an isolation facility.??

BCCL

As the number of cases dropped the BMC has decided to also return the private facility from next month.

“These facilities have long been vacant. It is costing us a lot of money to keep them running. So we will shut them down in a phased manner. If there is a spike in cases, we will reopen them,” Kiran Dighavkar, assistant municipal commissioner of G-North ward told Mumbai Mirror.

In fact the number of COVID-19 cases has been on the decline in Dharavi since June and this month there were only a few days when the new infections touched double digits.

This is a massive turn around from when the first COVID-19 case was reported in Dharavi on April 1, which was quite alarming.

AFP

That was because the detection of a highly contagious disease like?COVID-19 in Dharavi?which is Asia's largest slum spread over 613 hectares and home to over 15 lakh people, where?social distancing was impractical?meant that it was only a matter of time before the virus spread.?

But some aggressive testing contact tracing and isolation of positive cases meant that the authorities managed to arrest the spread before it went out of control.

The BMC's 'Chase the Virus' strategy in?Dharavi?even found a new fan in the?Philippines?government as it has decided to follow and implement the Dharavi Model for containing COVID in densely populated slums.