E-Paper
With 61 positive cases, Pune is Maharashtra’s 2nd Covid-19 hotspot
A few sporadic cases of community transmission were also reported in the city wherein the patients had no history of foreign travel or known contact with a positive patient
On Friday, 25 days after the Maharashtra’s first Covid-19 case was detected in Pune, the district reported 61 positive cases, which include two persons who died in Pune city and those who were discharged in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
A few sporadic cases of community transmission were also reported in the city wherein the patients had no history of foreign travel or known contact with a positive patient.
The first case, reported on March 9 and identified as ‘zero patients’ for Covid19 was that of a husband-wife couple who has returned from Dubai. This couple was not screened at the airport as Dubai, then, was not in the list of high risk countries.
Pune, with 61 positive cases, has recorded the second highest number of cases in Maharashtra, after Mumbai (235 cases).
Pune municipal commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad said that the containment plan is in place in almost all the areas of the city.
“Since the first case was recorded in the city on March 9, we put in place the containment place as prescribed by the government. Currently almost the entire city is covered. We started with containing the areas of about 1 to 3 kilometres of radius where a positive patient is found,” he said.
A notification from the ministry of health & family welfare said, “The cluster containment strategy would be to contain the disease within a defined geographic area by early detection, breaking the chain of transmission and thus preventing its spread to new areas. This would include geographic quarantine, social distancing measures, enhanced active surveillance, testing all suspected cases, isolation of cases, home quarantine of contacts, social mobilization to follow preventive public health measures.”
As of now, a few areas where multiple cases have been identified include, Sinhgad road where the Dubai return couple resides, Kondhwa, where people had returned from the Tablighi event in Delhi and Ambegaon where woman who was admitted to Bharati Hospital lives. The woman who was critical eventually recovered.
Pune also saw a few possible cases of community transmission of patients with no foreign travel history or direct contact with a positive Covid-19 case.
The city recorded two deaths, the first on March 30 when a 52-year-old businessman with multiple ailments from Thane was declared dead at a city hospital while the second death was reported on Thursday at the Sassoon Government Hospital of a 50-year-old woman with no other health condition.
The city also saw the miraculous recovery of a 41 year old aanganwadi worker who was admitted to Bharati Vidyapeeth Hospital on March 16. She tested negative, twice, for the virus on March 31 after being on the ventilator for almost 11 days.
Area sanitisation by Pune municipal corporation
The Pune Municipal Corporation has been spraying a solution of 1% sodium chlorite as a part of area sanitisation of localities where a positive patient was found. Such sanitisation has been done in 16 locations in the city.
