Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, zero covid patients have been found in Mumbai’s Vikhroli slum.
With more than 800 families living in Vikhroli’s Kannamwar Nagar slum, no single covid-19 positive patient was found since March 2020.
Despite a shortage of basic facilities such as a regular water supply and the lack of hygienic public toilets and other factors that compound the virus spread, not a single COVID-19 patient was found.
Pandurang Khavale, the Karya Adhyaksha (working president) currently under Shiv Sena MLA Sunil Raut, said, “The only precaution we took was not letting people from outside enter the gates of our slums. We went door to door to inform people to stay home and that they would be provided with food and facilities for the next coming days since most of them were daily wage workers, and that’s how we went through the first wave.”
The people living in the slums started selling necessities inside the boundaries of the slum, so fewer people had to go out during the second wave.
The slum proves that taking minimal necessary precautions is more than enough to stay safe during the pandemic. Apart from this, many people living in this slum got vaccinated without giving an ear to rumors.