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Month after Unlock: Spike in Covid cases, deaths an inevitability Pune unable to escape
The city has started opening up as a part of the unlocking process amidst the Covid-19 pandemic with an increase in commercial activity and relaxations coming in.
As Unlock 1.0 completed one month on Wednesday, Pune has seen a massive rise in the number of Covid positive cases along with deaths, an indication that increased movement of people resulted in the spike.
The city has started opening up as a part of the unlocking process amidst the Covid-19 pandemic with an increase in commercial activity and relaxations coming in. Along with the containment zone, as the people have started mingling in, the city is seeing a rise in the number of cases coming from non-containment zones.
Although Centre and the state government announced Unlock 1.0 from June 1, major relaxations such as reopening of private offices, auto-rickshaws and cab were allowed to operate a week later.
According to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the Covid progressive positive cases have surged from 6,529 on June 1 to 17,228 cases on June 30, a rise of 37 per cent in the number of patients. At the same time, the number of deaths reported in June stood at 330 compared to 228 in May and 85 in April.
Dr Raman Gaikwad, infectious disease specialist working in a private hospital said, “The increase in the number of cases is not as explosive as it was expected. Until now all predictions about the number of cases estimated have been wrong. Fortunately, the city hospitals have been able to manage patients and there is no shortfall in the number of beds too. However, the government must focus on the use of masks which is most essential when it is planning to unlock the city. As of now, it looks like the virus will only die its natural death eventually and people can only avoid coming in contact with anyone even when they are in public places by using masks and avoiding touching their face.”
With increasing cases, the civic body has also increased its testing capacity from 1,000 tests at the beginning of June to around 3,500 tests currently. The active to positive cases proportion rose from 30 per cent at the beginning of June to 38 per cent by June end as the number of positives reported rose drastically.
PMC officials said after some of the curbs were relaxed, more cases are now being reported from outside the containment zones than from inside the zones.
“We have observed that cases are coming up from housing societies where the infection had not reached till recently. During contact tracing, we found that the spread was because of allowing outsiders into the society or residents stepping out for work,” said PMC Commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad.
After the civic body started observing a spike in cases, the PMC has decided to review the containment zones twice every week to ensure that the movement of the people is restricted sooner rather than wait for 14 days. As the number of cases is rising, the civic body revised its projection which was earlier estimated to be around 40 thousand by July end to now estimated 47 thousand by the same time.
