The number of COVID-19 positive cases from Dharavi rose to four on Saturday.
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A 30-year-old woman, a resident of the same area as the first patient, along with a 48-year-old man from Dharavi’s Mukund Nagar, tested positive for the disease. This brings the total to four from the area, excluding a conservancy worker, who also tested positive.
Upscale Shivaji Park too reported its first positive case on Saturday.
Even as authorities are inspecting a Tablighi Jamaat link to the death of the first COVID-19 patient, the deceased’s immediate contacts have tested negative. But, a 30 year-old woman from the same part of Dharavi, Baliga Nagar, tested positive on Saturday. She was not a contact of the first patient. Her family is being tested and Baliga Nagar was sealed off. BMC has set up a health camp and is taking swab samples of residents who exhibit symptoms.
The second case is of a 48-year-old man from Mukund Nagar, not very far from Baliga Nagar. The patient has been admitted to Sion hospital. Both patients did not have a foreign travel history. BMC carried out screening and disinfection at Mukund Nagar on Saturday.
In the case of the 30-year-old female patient from Baliga Nagar, it has come to light that her 80-year-old father went to the same mosque as the first patient who died of COVID-19 in Dharavi. Five returnees from the Markaz at Delhi’s Nizamuddin had stayed in the same mosque while five others had stayed in the deceased’s flat. Besides, her father and the first patient had visited the same local doctor. While the doctor did not test positive, BMC suspects there maybe a link.
“We have quarantined and taken samples of her immediate contacts, and swab samples of every single resident of Baliga Nagar. As many as 132 vulnerable people were screened and 32 senior citizens have been found symptomatic. In the Mukund Nagar case, we have found 14 high risk and 74 low risk contacts. They will all be moved to a sports complex nearby. We have also acquired a 51-bed private hospital just in case,” said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant municipal commissioner of G North ward.
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Earlier, a doctor from Wockhardt hospital had also tested positive for COVID-19 and is under treatment. The hospital has already been sealed.
Besides, a 60 year-old man from Shivaji Park also tested positive on Saturday. This is the first case from the tony Shivaji Park, which falls in the same G North ward as Dharavi but is a stark contrast.
Shivaji Park legislator Sada Sarvankar said, “The person owns a printing press. In March, one of the staffers who is a resident of Worli contracted coronavirus and we suspect the owner contracted it from him. The press was shut after the lockdown but it seems this person developed symptoms now. His family is now in quarantine and is being tested.”
The building has been sealed and disinfected.
