Mumbai free of containment zones, sealed buildings

St Joseph Home and Nursery Orphanage at Agripada was sealed on August 26, 2021, after 25 children tested positive. Pic/Bipin Kokate

Nearly two years after the novel Coronavirus began wreaking havoc in Mumbai, there were no sealed buildings and containment zones in the city on Thursday. Slum pockets first freed themselves of such areas in mid-January. The number of active patients in the city has dropped to 3,698 after touching 1.17 lakh on January 9, the peak of the third wave.

The BMC started to declare slums as containment zones and seal buildings in May 2020, a few weeks after the virus arrived in the country. At one point, more than 50 per cent of the city's population was in containment zones, which were under the surveillance of the police and the BMC.

During the second wave, the slum population didn't face many issues over containment zones, but almost every building was sealed at one point. After the second wave, slums were out of such zones. Though the number of sealed buildings had been falling, it never touched zero in two years.

After the third wave, the number of sealed floors and buildings again started rising. With vaccination coverage expanding and Omicron strain being less deadly than Delta, the BMC eased norms but even then a few buildings were marked sealed, at least on paper. The last sealed building, until Wednesday, was in M-East ward that comprises Mankhurd and Govandi.

Meanwhile, BMC Commissioner IS Chahal said that ever since Mumbai's test positivity rate crossed 1 per cent on December 21, 2021, it was back to 1 per cent on Thursday after 56 days. In the third wave, Mumbai saw 2.85 lakh cumulative cases and an average of 5.5 deaths per day - 312 fatalities in 56 days. This is one of the lowest single-digit mortality rates in the third wave for any comparable city in India and abroad.