Congratulations Dharavi
A bit of good news.
Dharavi slum colony in Mumbai did not report a single Covid-19 case in the last 24 hours.
This is the first time since April 1, when the first coronavirus case was reported in Dharavi, that Asia’s largest slum has reported no new case in a single day.
According to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) data, so far Dharavi has reported 3,788 cases of which only 12 are active. 3,464 persons have recovered and been discharged from Covid centres.
That’s a lot of cases in one part of one city.
So far, 312 people have died due to Covid-19 in Dharavi, said the data released by Mumbai civic body.
On April 1, a 56-year-old man from Dharavi’s Baliga Nagar had tested positive creating panic and fear about the spread of the deadly virus in the dense slum pocket. This was the first Covid-19 case in the area.
Officials said that Dharavi had come full circle in its fight against Covid-19. From over a hundred cases a day in May and June, the number of new cases had reduced to single digits over recent months.
And didn’t rocket back up again the way they have in the US and UK.
“There has been a lot of community engagement and cooperation in Dharavi. It is because of that that we have been able to get to this zero-case milestone,” said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant municipal commissioner, G-North Ward.
“Our simple trace, track, test and treat formula has worked. Despite the dip in positive cases we will continue our rigorous screening and testing drives to ensure that there is no new spike in cases,” she said.
How sensible. We much prefer to throw big parties and show up maskless.
That’s amazing!
Meanwhile here in Britain I am starting my 5th day of waiting for my COVID test result…
While we are waiting for the vaccine, lockdowns and maintenance of social distancing appear to be the best way to go.
If the world could be divided into communities of about 100,000 or less, with passing through quarantine a strict condition for travel between them, we could eliminate every human virus disease in the world. (That was the nub of a lecture I attended years ago by Prof Frank Fenner, of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra.)
Witness Pacific Islands communities pre-air travel. Everyone would be healthy until the trading boat came in, wherupon they would start coming down with colds and flu and everything else.
Yeah, and my state won’t require either. Nor masks. It’s all so laissez faire, so…Republican. And my boss has devised a form for our doctors to fill out if we wish to continue working remotely; that form will be nearly impossible for any doctor to fill out without sooner or later making some statement in just the ‘wrong’ way, to allow HR to put their judgment in place of our doctor’s judgment. (There are no medical doctors in our HR.) Most of the faculty have opted not to try; they are going to risk it. I think…I may see if I can get my doctor to fill it out, and do it well. They are playing chicken with us (the faculty), and we almost always blink.
That’s appalling.