When the second wave of the coronavirus hit Mumbai hard, among the worst affected regions was the M-West ward that covers Chembur. At the time, the civic body sent notices to housing societies in the region, directing them to seal their complexes if there was a high positivity rate.
However, the M-West ward has seen a fall in cases over the past twenty days. With around 392 cases from the ward on April 5, the cases fell down to just 143 as of April 25.
This means that the M-West ward is ranked in the bottom three among wards with the most positive cases. The ward’s growth rate presently stands at 0.92 per cent while Mumbai’s average is 1.17 per cent.
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When asked what led to the decline in cases over a 20-day period, the Medical Health Officer of M-West ward, Dr Bhupendra Patil said that strict enforcement of lockdown rules was the primary contributor to the decline.
“M-West was among the first civic wards to file FIRs against individual persons for violating home quarantine rules and hosting weddings with hundreds of guests as well as sealing entire buildings with five or more positive Covid cases,” Dr Patil said.
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“We also formed teams to check if shops operated from the backdoor, whether sealed buildings were conforming to the rules and physically verify crowd control at weddings,” he said adding that M-West is now reporting less than 150 new cases since the last three days.
While enforcing health guidelines such as social distancing has been difficult over the past few weeks, the success of the M-West ward is expected to serve as a yardstick for the officials on how to handle a steep rise in COVID-19 cases.
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