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Pune sees a stronger second Covid wave
On Wednesday Pune recorded 7,887 fresh cases, taking the tally up to 679,313 of which 112,213 are active. As cases in soar, patients are being turned away due to bed shortage
The Covid pandemic has wreaked havoc on 31-year-old Shraddha Shinde’s family. Last August, the Sahakarnagar resident tested positive for Covid-19 along with her father-in-law. This year, her husband’s uncle tested positive and died on April 11. In both instances, Shinde’s family struggled for health care support – last year, for a bed, and this year, for oxygen support.
“My father-in-law was a senior citizen and seeing the drop in his oxygen levels our family doctors recommended that we get him admitted. He was admitted at the PMC jumbo centre. Those were really tough days for our family but both of us recovered [Shinde isolated herself at home] and we were beginning to get back to normal life. However, this year again the virus struck, and we lost a family member.”
On Wednesday Pune recorded 7,887 fresh cases, taking the tally up to 679,313 of which 112,213 are active. As cases in soar, patients are being turned away due to bed shortage. By comparison, during the first wave, the highest number of cases reported was on September 16 at 5,049. This month, most major hospitals in Pune city have already run out of ventilators and ICU beds; only 27 ICU beds with ventilators were free (out of 1,181 in the district), while 685 isolation beds with oxygen were free (out of 10,228). The demand for oxygen in the district has gone up by over 350% in the first four months of 2021. Overall, only 3,552 beds out of 23,640 beds were vacant on April 14 in Pune.
In both waves, Pune district has been one of the worst hit. In fact, if Maharashtra is driving India’s second wave, Pune, Mumbai, Thane and Nagpur are the four big urban centres driving Maharashtra’s daily caseload; in the first four days of April, they accounted for 59% of the state’s cases. But this year, there is one crucial difference: vaccination.
“While my father-in-law got the vaccine, my husband’s uncle did not take the vaccine and had co-morbidity conditions. Everyone must get themselves vaccinated without any delay as each day they are risking the exposure to infection,” Shinde said.
Although Mumbai and Pune have more than 10 million population, the density in Pune district is less than that of Mumbai city, leading experts to ask an important question: why is Pune so highly affected this time around?
Dr Pradip Awate, state surveillance officer explains that Pune had reported a similar trend during the H1N1 pandemic, and he attributes it to the city’s climate. However, studies have found little correlation between the spread of the disease and the climate, stressing on the fact that it is the behaviour of humans that affects how fast the virus actually spreads.
Awate also pointed out that Pune’s density could also be a possible factor to consider. “40% of Pune’s population is urbanized, and the density is far higher than the state average. The decadal growth rate of Pune’s population density is 36 while Mumbai’s is -5.75.”
Then there is the issue with Pune’s poor health infrastructure. He said, “Though Pune managed surveillance activities well in the initial phase of the pandemic with the help of manpower pulled from various other departments, it’s difficult to sustain the tempo once this manpower is withdrawn during the declining phase of the disease. In cities like Pune, it is breath-taking to keep pace with a rapidly growing population in terms of building health infrastructure. Sassoon hospital is the only government tertiary care centre for its 4 million population. Even for Covid-19, only 23 percent of dedicated beds are available in government institutions. Covid-19 pandemic laid open these inadequacies substantially.”
Pune’s Naidu hospital which was the first Covid-19 hospital in the state and was pivotal in fighting H1N1 pandemic too did not have a ventilator for months into pandemic.
During both waves, the city faced shortages: of beds, Remdesivir (the anti-viral drug) and also, oxygen supply. In terms of vaccination, however, Pune has taken the lead. For over a week the district vaccinated the highest number of beneficiaries in the state. Pune has administered 1,519,763 doses already. By comparison, Mumbai has administered 1,768,939 as of Tuesday.
In the sero survey conducted reported on August 18 in five small wards in the highly infected areas, a sero positivity rate of about 51.5% was recorded, indicating that half the population had developed antibodies.
This raises the question of the effectiveness of antibodies. DR Subhash Salunkhe, advisor to the state government for Covid-19, who himself got infected after taking the jab (to be sure, the jab does not give 100% immunity against the virus, but it does provide immunity against severity and death) said, “It remains to be seen what duration the antibodies remain effective for. Although people may be infected even after vaccination, the chances of hospitalization fall drastically like in my case.”
He had also written to the state government to investigate whether the new double mutant strain of the virus – a variant found in samples from Maharashtra, announced by the Centre last month -- is escaping the antibodies.
A Central team which visited the 30 most affected districts in the state, including Pune, last week found that adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour was lacking. This bears out: by April 9, the district administration had recovered ₹28.31 crores from 6.26 lakh violators for not wearing a mask or spitting in public.
Pune was also one of the first districts to be declared as a containment zone on April 19, 2020, when Pune city, Pimpri Chinchwad and rural Pune was declared as a containment zone to contain the spread. Following this, multiple restrictions through mini lockdowns continued, but implementation remained a problem.
