E-Paper
Covid growth rate in Bhavani peth slows, but green zone of Aundh-Baner ward reports more cases
It’s natural that if the people’s movement would increase, cases would increase in new areas, says Dr Vaishali Jadhav, deputy health chief in Pune Municipal Corporation
Pune’s Bhavani Peth ward office that was reporting high number of Covid positive cases till recently has seen signs of improvement with area now reporting lowest growth rate of 8 % among fresh cases. On the other hand, Aundh-Baner ward, which till May was in green zone, has thrown high number of cases, taking it to first spot in growth rate as high as 261%.
The Pune Municipal Corporation has a total of 15 regional ward offices. Among its Bhavani peth ward office was worst affected and till date most of the parts falling in this ward office are containment zones. Most of the slums, including Kashewadi, Lohianagar, Mominpura, Raviwar peth, Guruwar peth and Pune station area had reported high number of positive cases. As on June 8, this ward office area had 107 active Covid-19 cases. 
Aundh Baner ward office was in the green zone, but number of positive cases started going up since first week of June and now has it has 84 active cases as on June 8. Till last week of May, this ward office had only 20 cases.
Dr Vaishali Jadhav, deputy health chief in Pune Municipal Corporation and in of contact tracing for the whole city, said, “As most parts of Bhavani peth ward office area are falling in containment zones, preventing any activity, the growth rate of the Covid-19 positive cases have come down. But as the relaxation has been given to the rest of the city, numbers of cases are increasing out of non-containment zones. It’s natural that if the people’s movement would increase, cases would increase in new areas. This process would continue for the next couple of months. Red zones would become green and green areas would turn into red zones.”
According to Sugar commissioner Saurabh Rao, who has been given the responsibility of the Bhavani peth and Dhole Patil road ward offices, efforts undertaken by civic authorities in Bhavani peth have borne results. “Mainly, we increased contact tracing in the containment zones. We have even started early detection in these areas. Early detection is key as it helps to bring down the mortality rate as well as helps to bring down spread of coronavirus.”
Dhole Patil ward officer Dayanand Sonkamble said, “We concentrated on cleaning of community toilets as well as distributed ration kits door to door. Even took effort to sell vegetables at doorstep, which helped to get control over the spread of Covid-19.”
Aundh-Baner ward officer Jaydeep Pawar said, “Positive cases are increasing mainly in slum areas falling in Bopodi area. We closed the internal roads in these areas and even closed the vegetable and fish markets in these areas.”
