The World Health Organisation on Friday praised the efforts taken to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Mumbai’s Dharavi, one of the world’s largest slums of Asia which reported a single-digit rise in the number of positive cases for three consecutive days this week.
At a virtual press conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there were many examples from around the world that have shown that even if the outbreak is very intense, it can still be brought back under control.
“And some of these examples are Italy, Spain and South Korea, and even in Dharavi – a densely packed area in the megacity of Mumbai,” Ghebreyesus said.
Here are 10 points about Dharavi’s fight against Covid-19:
1. Dharavi is spread over an area of 2.5 square kilometres and has a population of about 8,00,000. People live in shanties and dilapidated buildings with narrow lanes and open sewers.
2. The first Covid-19 case in Dharavi was reported on April 1, nearly three weeks after Mumbai recorded its maiden positive case on March 11.
3. The government had launched an intensive screening and sanitization drive to prevent Covid-19 cases going out of hand in Dharavi.
4. Dharavi reported 12 new coronavirus cases on Friday, after recording one, three and nine new cases on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.
5. On June 9, the tally of the coronavirus cases in Dharavi, reached 2,347 after nine new infections were detected.
6. Throughout June, Dharavi recorded an average of 18 new cases daily, with the highest single-day spike in recorded cases on June 1 (34 new cases). The number of new cases have declined in July.
7. Dharavi has only 166 active Covid-19 cases, while 1,815 patients have recovered and have been discharged.
8. Over six lakh of an approximate population of eight lakh residents in Dharavi have been screened till now.
9. While Dharavi’s Covid-19 tally has come down, the count in Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtar continues to rise.
10. On Saturday, India’s Covid-19 tally reached 8.2 lakh with 27,114 new cases with 22,123 deaths.
Source: HindustanTimes