Parts of Indian mega-slum cordoned off after deaths

MUMBAI: Indian police barricaded parts of one of Asia´s biggest slums Friday after two coronavirus deaths, as under-pressure Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to dispel “darkness and uncertainty” with a national light show. India so far has largely escaped the pandemic with 2,300 infections and 56 deaths, according to official figures, but two fatalities and a third infection in the Dharavi neighbourhood of Mumbai have set alarm bells ringing.

Authorities have set up eight “containment zones” in the area, home to as many as a million people living and working in cramped tin-roofed shanties, flats and small factories — made famous by the 2008 film “Slumdog Millionaire”.

“We have home-quarantined people from these buildings and cordoned off the area so people can´t enter them, and enforced social distancing,” said Vijay Khabale-Patil, spokesman of Mumbai´s city authority. “We sprayed hydrochloric acid to disinfect these buildings and nearby areas as well... People from Dharavi are following the rules and keeping themselves and their kids inside homes. Police on Friday were not letting anyone in or out of the cordoned areas.

The first death from coronavirus in Dharavi, on Wednesday, was a 56-year-old man with no travel history or contact with anyone known to be infected, although he previously had a renal complaint, officials said. The second fatality — a 51-year-old sanitation worker living in a different area of Mumbai, but who worked in Dharavi -- died in hospital on Thursday. The third case is a doctor who lived and worked in the neighbourhood, who on Friday was receiving treatment. Experts say the coronavirus could spread like wildfire in slums where social distancing and self-isolation are all but impossible.