Micro containment zones rise up to 109 in Pune municipal corporation areas

PUNE: The civic administration on Wednesday increased the number of micro containment zones from 74 to 109 in areas under its limits following the recent spike in coronavirus cases.
The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), in its first rearrangement of zones as part of second phase of unlock, deleted 15 zones from its earlier list and added 50 new with effect from Thursday. It, however, kept the total area under containment more or less unchanged at 6.69 sqkm.

“Though the number of micro containment zones has gone up, the area under containment has not increased much because we made the size of the micro-containment zones even smaller. In many cases, an existing containment zone has been divided into two or more micro-containment zones,” municipal commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad said.
The civic administration, however, did not make any changes as far as shop timings are concerned. The shops in the non-containment zones will operate between 9am and 7pm. Only essential shops in the containment zones will remain open from 9am to 2pm.
Gaikwad said the administration identified the new micro containment zones based on the spike in the number of coronavirus positive cases in those areas.
The new cases are coming up mostly from in the non slum areas. Areas such as Aundh, Baner, Kothrud and Bavdhan, which had very few patients even in recent past, are of late witnessing a sizeable spike in the Covid-19 positive cases. The maximum number of the micro containment zones are along Ahmednagar Road and Satara Road and in the Parvati, Bopodi and Hadapsar areas.
PMC data revealed that the total area under containment zones in its limits spanned across 6.645 sq km after the last major zoning on June 16. It was lesser than the 9.93sq km area that was under containment on May 3. Only 2% of areas in the PMC limits are now in the containment zones as against 3% on May 3.
The PMC had 66 containment zones in its limits during the fourth phase of lockdown. The number of containment zones was brought down to 63 in the first rearrangement of Unlockdown 1.0 in first week of June. The second restructuring was made on June 16.
This time, the number of containment zones was increased from 66 to 73. Before entering Unlockdown 2.0, the PMC made its last reorganization of the micro containment zones on June 24, when it added one more zone to the list.
“When it comes to sealing a building after finding a patient, we will take the decision on a case-by-case basis. If not needed, we will avoid sealing of a building even after finding a couple of patients. Options like only sealing the patient’s flat or the floor will be considered,” Gaikwad said.