MUMBAI: The
BMC has surveyed close to 80% of the city’s 1.3 crore population as part of its ‘My Family, My Responsibility’ campaign. The civic body has been carrying out the door-todoor survey of Mumbaikars to check the Covid-19 spread.
On Saturday, BMC additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said, “The survey has helped us keep a check on the spread of the virus and helped us identify symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.”
The BMC has covered around 33 lakh houses and over one crore residents of buildings and slums.
Civic officials said that they will start the survey’s second round to connect with those who missed the first. Health-related information gathered in the first round will be double-checked as well. “We will also examine any changes in the health of the people surveyed in the first round,” said a civic official.
Senior citizens and people with co-morbidities were the campaign’s focus groups. “These are the two groups that have been vulnerable to Covid and make up for over 80% of the mortality rate,” said the official.
The campaign, which started on September 15, led to increased testing. This, in turn, led to a slight increase in the number of positive cases.
A senior doctor from a BMCrun hospital said higher identification means more transmission chains are broken, thereby keeping the spread in check in the long run.
Several residential pockets, though, were reportedly reluctant to share their health information with BMC teams.
Initially, BMC teams were not permitted by some housing societies to collect information from members. The BMC then roped in local corporators to connect with people. The corporators, in turn, sent their representative with the civic teams.
When the campaign started, the projected virus doubling rate in the city was 55 days, with a 1.3% daily growth rate calculated on the basis of the past seven days. The city had 30,879 active Covid-19 cases then.
After completion of the first round of the campaign on October 16, the projected doubling rate increased to 82 days, as the daily growth rate reduced to 0.85%, with 19,608 active cases.