Despite a continuing trend of a dip in COVID-19 cases across the five districts in Pune division, authorities have warned that a complacent attitude during the upcoming festive season could result in a further spike.
From being India’s worst-hit district, Pune’s active cases have come down below 32,000, currently standing at a little over 31,000, — a marked improvement from its previous figure of 40,000 exactly a month ago. The district has reported 3.06 lakh cases and until three weeks ago, was reporting alarming daily spikes of over 4,000 cases. That has reduced to less than 1,500 cases in the past fortnight, with Pune’s recovery rate surging past 87%.
“This dip in cases must be kept up even during the crucial festive season. One must bear in mind that Pune’s case positivity rate, while down from 30% from 10 days ago, is still hovering between 20-23%, which is still high,” said Pune Divisional Commissioner Saurabh Rao. He said the positivity rate had dipped noticeably to 15-18% in Pimpri-Chinchwad, while the Pune Municipal Corporation stood somewhat on the higher side, between 21-23%.
Pune Zilla Parishad CEO Ayush Prasad said the case doubling rate in Pune Rural region had improved to 32 from the previous figure of 27 in the first week of October. Despite these positive signs, Mr. Rao said authorities were not taking it easy and were focussing on increasing the bed capacity across the district’s hospitals.
“We are striving to increase beds each day and have now reached a situation where we are in a relatively comfortable position with regard to critical care beds. Sassoon Hospital has increased its capacity by more than 45-50% and Ruby Hall by nearly 40%,” he said. He observed that Pune was fortunate that the surge last month did not happen at every place at the same time.
He noted that the Old Pune area or the Peth area, which had constituted the major clusters during the surge in the months after March, had more or less stabilised. “It is the peripheral areas and semi-urban areas in Pune that we are focussing on,” he said.
One notable aspect of the case dip across Pune division — which comprises Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli Solapur and Pune disricts — has been the steady decline of cases and fatalities in Solapur, hitherto the worst-hit district after Pune.
Mr. Rao said quality contact tracing and intense focus on ‘super-spreaders’ had been the key in checking the spread of the contagion in Solapur. Solapur currently has more than 5,000 active cases from more than 7,500 active cases a fortnight ago — more than a 30% dip.
“At one point, the situation was rather grim in Solapur. However, a gradual decline in cases began since the past month. Initially, experts felt it was artificial as the major focus was on antigen testing. But slowly, we became convinced that cases were indeed declining as the numbers stabilised,” said the Divisional Commissioner.
Mr. Rao said the Solapur district administration had worked on decentralising health facilities in various parts of the district in parallel with its focus on strategic testing as well as the timely identification of positive cases.
While Kolhapur and Sangli were improving, he, however, expressed concern about the surging cases in Satara, which is currently the worst-afflicted in the division after Pune. Satara has more than 6,500 active cases (from a total case tally exceeding 41,000) and more than 1,350 fatalities.
While acknowledging that the testing in Pune had declined slightly — from an average of 14,000 samples per day to 12,000 – as a number of lab technicians had tested positive, Mr. Rao assured that the capacity would be increased soon.
