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Eight months on, 500 Pune villages have not reported a single Covid case
Zilla parishad official said villagers strictly followed safety norms laid down by authorities.
Pune: Around 500 villages surrounding Pune district have managed to keep the deadly SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, at bay. The villages have not reported a single case since the past eight month since the first case in the state and the district was reported on March 9. The villagers have been able to keep away the virus by following all norms.
These villages are small with a population of not more than 2,000-3,000 and are located in the interiors. The efforts by the villagers have ensured that the virus does not enter their homes.
Ayush Prasad, CEO of Pune Zilla Parishad, said, “Of the 1,400 villages, currently over 1,000 do not have any active cases and of those 500 have not had a single virus case. It has now been proven that the cases in rural Pune were somehow linked to the city. So, now when the cases in Pune city are coming down, eventually the cases in rural Pune are declining. These 500 villages had nominal floating population to Pune city and so there was no way for the infection to spread to the interiors.”
Some of the initiatives taken by the villages included complete shutdown of the market by ensuring that essentials are provided door to door. The villagers also made sure that de-sanitisation takes place at least two times daily, an awareness committee was formed in every village which included the sarpanch and government officials, door-to-door survey which has been done about 5-6 times till now with the help of anganwadi members, those entering the villages were kept a watch and shops were kept shut with mutual consent with the shopkeepers.
Pune rural has reported a total of 73,524 Covid cases as of Tuesday, of which 1,921 deaths were reported which took the case fatality rate to 2.61%. These cases were reported from gram panchayats, municipal councils and the three cantonments. Out of the 73,000 cases, over 66,000 have recovered and have been discharged and currently there are 3,882 in hospital isolation and 1,102 in home isolation. Over 2.68 lakh samples have been tested from Pune rural areas, according to the state health department officials.