Managing CoViD-19 Pandemic in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Maharashtra, India

The CoViD situation globally tested the efficacy of health infrastructure as well as the administrative management of urban areas. This study focuses on the impact of the CoViD-19 pandemic across the nine municipal corporations in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with respect to their demography, new cases and casualties. While it is observed that the Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC) recorded the highest incidence of CoViD cases at 11.86% of its population; on the other hand, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), one of the largest municipal bodies in India, witnessed the lowest occurrence of CoViD cases, at 1.36% of its population. This is remarkable, considering that owing to its significant slum population, the BMC is particularly vulnerable to any pandemic. The study therefore converges to the spread of CoViD across different wards in Mumbai, one of the most populous municipal corporation jurisdictions in India, to understand the BMC's management strategies during the pandemic. For this GIS-based, ward-wise analysis of BMC, both spatial and temporal datasets were collected to examine and understand the spatial spread of CoViD in the city. The study revealed that despite relatively larger slum population in certain wards, both CoViD cases and deaths are relatively lower. Moreover, no significant correlation is observed, either between the number of cases, or deaths and the population density at the ward level.