Mumbai's 90% Covid-19 patients in past 2 months from highrises

Mumbai : As many as 90 per cent patients in Mumbai, who tested positive for COVID-19 in January and February this year, were residents of high-rise buildings, while the remaining 10 per cent were from slums and chawls, the city civic body has said.

However, the situation has changed to some extent this month as the number of cases from slums are also going up, civic officials said. Of the total number of 23,002 people, who tested positive for COVID-19 in the first two months of this year, 90 per centwere residents of building and 10 per cent others from slums and chawls, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)said in a release.

"But we are now receiving a large number of patients from slums as well. Most of them are from middle and lower class background," a senior doctor of a civic hospital, who did not wish to be named, said.

The number of coronavirus containment zones and sealed buildings in the city increased by 170per cent and 66.42 per cent, respectively, from the beginning of this month, the civic body said.

According to the BMC's COVID-19 dashboard, while the city had 10 containment zones and 137 sealed buildings on March 1, the number of containment zones increased to 27 and sealed buildings to 228 on March 10.

The dashboard pointed out that of the 7.46 lakh people living in these zones, over 23 per cent were from slums and chawls, while the remaining 77 per cent were from sealed buildings.

An assistant municipal commissioner said the number of COVID-19 cases from slums has certainly gone up, but it cannot be called a spike. Also the patients are scattered across slums and not concentrated in any particular pocket of the slums.

Mumbai's coronavirus tally till Thursday night was 3,38,631, while the death toll was 11,515.