Data provided by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) show that civic wards comprising areas like Bandra, Chembur, and Goregaon are reporting the highest number of coronavirus cases over a 7-day period.
The H-West ward, which is home to regions like Bandra, Khar, and Santacruz, is said to be the worst affected at the moment. A two per cent growth rate has been observed in H-West and P-South (Goregaon) wards, whereas M-West (Chembur) is reporting a 1.86 per cent growth rate for the deadly virus. These figures are higher considering Mumbai’s average COVID-19 growth rate of 1.46 per cent.
Corporators from H-West said that the region is witnessing 400 to 500 cases per day, adding that most of them are from housing societies with only a small portion of them coming from slum areas. Concurring with this notion, BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has mentioned that around 95 per cent of cases are emerging from buildings.
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Officials from the P-South ward said that the region (Goregaon) is witnessing over 300 cases per day for the last five days. Local corporator Srikala Pillai said, “Covid is infecting families as a whole and therefore this rise in numbers. People also need to be more conscious as earlier we had seen our ward report a maximum of 180-190 cases, which have now shot up.”
She added that slums in the region are seeing minimal cases with most of them being reported from high-rises or residential societies, a phenomenon not uncommon in the city.
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Officials from the M-West ward comprising Chembur said that citizens who are in quarantine are non-cooperative on some occasions, adding “When civic staff call them up, at times they do not share the symptoms as they fear longer quarantine.”
“Daily cases are unmanageable and one cannot blame the civic machinery that has to deal with these. It is getting difficult to get beds for mildly symptomatic patients. But what if the person’s condition deteriorates further? While the BMC says beds would be allotted through ward war rooms, the war rooms take 2-3 days to contact patients at times and, in the meantime, hospitals deny patients beds if they approach them directly,” Corporator Asif Zakeria said.
The State has imposed some restrictions on Mumbai given the fresh surge of cases. Authorities are expected to ramp up vaccinations across the city as well as the state to immunize as many as possible, thus negating the consequences of a new surge. The emergence of COVID-19 variants also remains a lingering concern for epidemiologists, particularly the strains detected from South Africa, the UK, and Brazil.
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