Shaonlee Patranabis, Sahil Gandhi and Vaidehi Tandel conduct a spatial analysis on the vulnerability of Mumbai's slums to coronavirus pandemic


Excerpts:

" Slums constitute 17% of urban households in India; in Mumbai itself, they make up 42% of the households. Slums in Mumbai are extremely crowded — often with many people staying in a single room. These areas also lack necessary amenities like private toilets and availability of clean water, making it easy for outbreaks to spread. Ideally, examining the relationship between slums and COVID-19 outbreaks would involve looking at the number of infected cases within and around slums. However, this data has not been made available. Therefore, we undertake a spatial analysis based on the location of Containment Zones within the city.

To see whether Containment Zone epicenters are within or around slums, we overlay these on a layer of slum areas, as demarcated by various government authorities in Mumbai. One of the first cases of COVID-19 in a slum in Mumbai was identified on March 23 in Bainganwadi in the M-East Ward. Since then, many Containment Zones have been created in the slums of Mumbai."

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