Mumbai’s Dharavi reports no new Covid cases in 5 days; Is it safe to declare it Covid-free just yet?

Mumbai’s slum-dominated area Dharavi, which was once one of the hotspots of Covid-19 in the city, has reported no new cases of the virus in the past five days. The first case and death due to Coronavirus in the area were recorded on April 1, 2020, reported IE. Dharavi had recorded the highest-ever single day tally of 150 new infections on January 6 this year.

Dharavi achieved this feat on Thursday when no new Covid case and no active case were reported in the area. Talking to the media on Thursday, Kiran Dighavkar, Assistant Municipal Commissioner G/North, had stated that Dharavi is Covid-free in the true sense.

But is it safe to declare the area Covid free just yet? WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, had recently revealed that Coronavirus is well on its way to becoming endemic, but that does not mean we should lower our guard against the virus. “Now is not the time to give up. Now is not the time to say the pandemic is over. Unfortunately, it’s not. so we have to increase vaccination coverage in those most at risk in every country on the planet. As well as take simple measures to reduce the spread,” Kerkhove said.

Public Health Specialist and Executive Director of Health Emergencies Programme at WHO, Dr. Mike Ryan, had also stated that even if Covid-19 becomes endemic, it is still going to be important to reduce infections, suffering, and death. He further added that changing the status of a pandemic to endemic is just changing the label and not the challenge that the world faces.

Dr. Ryan said that we need sustained control of this virus and strong health systems to deal with those infections we can’t prevent, and we need to be able to continue to do that with the levels of infection we experience.