BMC reports that Mumbai becomes the first district in India to administer more than 1 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
Mumbai on Friday became the first district to complete one crore vaccinations against their massive vaccine drive against COVID-19 according to the data published on CoWin portal reporting a total of 1,00,60,411 crore vaccine doses till Friday, covering 78% of the adult population with at least one shot. Mumbai has administered 72.74 lakh people with dose and 27.86 doses with dose two.
Mumbai’s densely populated city with a 2021 population survey is now estimated to be over 20 million people, seated in a densely packed peninsula, thus this is considered a remarkable achievement. Being the financial capital of India with mass travelers throning airports at the beginning of the pandemic in 2019, Mumbai was heavily hit at the eve of the pandemic with high death rates, but with tough lockdowns, stringent rules, and massive vaccine drives, Mumbai has crossed the bridge of rising death rates although cases have risen.
Mumbai recorded 422 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, the third straight day of more than 400 infections, and three fresh fatalities, while 303 patients recovered from the disease
Lockdown would not be imposed in Maharashtra in the coming days, health minister Rajesh Tope said on Friday. “There is no possibility of fresh lockdown in the near future. I appeal to people to avoid crowding while celebrating the Ganesh festival. The celebration should be simple,” he told.
“The government has been issuing various guidelines and they should be followed all the time,” he added. Maharashtra reported 4,313 new COVID-19 cases and 92 deaths on Friday.
Mumbai has 42 sealed buildings although slums and ‘chawls’ (old row tenements) have remained free of containment zones since mid-August.
In the first phases of the pandemic in 2020 April when COVID-19 claimed its first victim in Mumbai’s Dharavi – India’s largest slum, people were terrified that Dharavi would turn into a graveyard as social distancing or contact tracing was literally impossible.
Within three months, Mumbai’s Dharavi has won praise from the WHO for the painstaking efforts taken by the Maharashtra government to contain the spread of the Covid-19.
The officials report that an aggressive strategy that focused on “chasing the virus, instead of waiting for disaster” helped them flatten the COVID-19 curve in Dharavi prohibiting the virus from spreading and the BMC’s approach was focused on four Ts – tracing, tracking, testing and treating, say officials.