Dharavi Records 13 New Cases Of Covid-19, Total Tally At 288, Including 14 Deaths

Dharavi recorded 13 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 today, taking the total count of infected in Mumbai’s biggest slum to 288.

Of the 13 cases, two each were recorded from Mukund Nagar, Indira Nagar and Shastri Nagar and one each was recorded from Vijay Nagar, Madina Nagar, Prem Nagar, Muslim Nagar, 90 feet road, Gangadhar Chawl and Palkar chawl areas of Dharavi, said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant commissioner in charge of the G/North Ward in Central Mumbai.

Of the latest to test positive were five women aged between 29 years and 65 years and eight men aged between 30 years and 85 years.

Between Saturday and Sunday, Dharavi recorded 55 new cases of the virus.

So far, 14 people have died because of complications related to Covid-19 in Dharavi, a sprawl of shanties spread over 240 hectares with a population of 8.5 lakh and over 13,000 small businesses.

Speaking about the strategy adopted to combat Covid-19 in Dharavi, Dighavkar had said on Sunday, “We have increased the number of institutional quarantined facilities from 1,000 to 2,300 to shift maximum number of people in institutional quarantine. One more private school (Manohar Joshi Vidyalaya, Dharavi, behind Sports Complex) was converted into 700-bed institutional quarantine. Focus will be on shifting/isolating maximum people into institutional quarantine and testing them.”

He further said, “We have asked private clinics to re-open and refer cases to us. We will quarantine these cases in our institutional quarantine and test them that will help us to screen entire Dharavi. There are 350 clinics (in the area) whom we will provide PPE kits, masks, gloves, face shields etc. We will sanitised all clinics”.

According to Maharashtra health ministry’s media bulletin on Monday, the state recorded 522 new cases of Covid-19 taking the total tally at 8,590. Total number of cases in Mumbai stands at 5,776.