In Charts: How Mumbai Emerged As The Epicentre Of Covid-19 In India
The sprawling city of Mumbai, among the world’s most crowded, is now racing against time to flatten the curve.
India’s financial hub has emerged as the epicentre of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak as the city alone accounts for more than a fifth of the total case count.
The sprawling city of Mumbai, among the world’s most crowded, is racing against time to flatten the curve of Covid-19 infections that have crossed 1 lakh in the world’s second-most populous country.
Mumbai alone had 25,500 confirmed cases as on May 21, according to Maharashtra’s Public Health Department. So far, 841 people in the city have succumbed to the disease, while 4,702 recovered. This is only the situation in the metropolitan region of Mumbai and doesn’t include adjoining areas like Thane and Navi Mumbai, which are seen as a part of the city.
This is a cause of concern for the city’s administration that serves as home to everyone from top business executives and Bollywood movie stars to millions of migrant labourers that reside in cramped slum shanties.
“We have to bring this situation under control before the monsoon arrives,” state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said in a broadcast on Monday. “When we see the figures in April and May, it is scary. They are definitely something that is worrying. But I won’t let the situation go out of hand.”
Thackeray said the projections they had for Mumbai were “frightening”. But the city is taking efforts that those levels were not reached. “While we have not been able to break the chain of infection, we have definitely put a brake on the speed at which the infections are increasing.”
A higher incidence of cases has been noted in the southern half of the city. The most number of cases are in the G North ward that includes Dadar, Mahim and India’s largest slum Dharavi. It’s followed by the E ward, which includes areas in and around Byculla and the G South ward that has commercial hubs Lower Parel and Worli.
Other areas that have higher cases are the F North ward of Matunga along the Thane creek, L Ward of regions around Kurla and Powai and the K West ward of Andheri and Oshiwara.
The whole city remains a red zone, implying a lot of the lockdown relaxations that have been allowed are not applicable.
The city, however, has ramped up preparations for a predicted peaking of virus cases this month. Some of its iconic structures and open areas are being converted into temporary facilities. On Tuesday, the chief minister visited a 1,000-bed makeshift hospital built in Bandra Kurla Complex on a vast open ground that was once used to host everything from concerts to public rallies.
Other similar facilities are coming up at the National Sports Club of India in Worli, the Mahalaxmi Racecourse, the Nehru Science Centre and Nehru Planetarium, among others. In all, these will increase the city’s capacity by 1 lakh beds—about five times more than the total number of cases in Mumbai.
Yet, that doesn’t mean authorities should no longer stay on their toes. Mumbai would do well to learn from the trajectory of infections in other developed nations that were caught off-guard by the virus. Take the four other comparable megacities from the developed world: New York, Madrid, London and Milan.
While these cities were hit much earlier and more severely by the virus, they saw their curve flattening from the 50th day of the outbreak. But Mumbai is nowhere close.
It’s a long couple of months ahead for the city of dreams and its countless dreamers. The right measures can save lives and avoid a human tragedy unseen in recent times.