Smallest ward of city clocks zero cases for 9 straight days

The city’s B ward, the smallest of the 24 civic wards, has posted a big achievement: nine consecutive days without registering a single Covid-19 case.

- Richa Pinto & Malathy Iyer

Mumbai:

Though it has a small population of roughly 1.5 lakh, it encompasses congested parts of Mohammed Ali Road and Dongri, and P D Mello Road and the docks. This area with a poor hospital network (except for state-run JJ Hospital), high floating population and inadequate sanitation has the best Covidcontrol index. In November so far, it has enjoyed 13 days of zero tally. The last cases (2) were registered on November 10 though civic officials insist that at least 700 people are tested here daily.

“B Ward has had cases in single digits for some time now. In fact, it has the lowest proportion in the city’s 7.6 lakh tally,” said BMC executive health officer Dr Mangala Gomare. Since the Covid pandemic began in March 2020, the area has registered only 4,121 cases so far. Another official said people’s exposure to the virus must have been high due to cheek-byjowl living conditions. “But it seems to have led to herd immunity here,” he said.

Congress MLA Amin Patel remembers the pandemic began on a bad note here. While the overall Covid mortality has been around 1%, the area initially saw a 10% mortality. Almost 10% of positive cases in the ward would pass away,” said Patel. But the all-round panic along with public health measures of sealing and isolating patients helped check the initial spread, he said.