With no CCC, flu clinics operational, PMC relies on private clinics to track Covid-19 patients

With no Covid Care Centers (CCC) and Flu clinics operational in the city at present to cater to the Covid-19 patients, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to reach out to private practitioners in the hotspot areas of the city to track the patients with flu-like symptoms.

The increasing spread of Covid-19 patients in the city has made the civic administration pull up its socks to contain the spread as early as possible. “We have been daily monitoring the Covid-19 spread in the city. There are at least six pockets where the patients are increasing,” said Kalpana Baliwant, assistant medical officer in the civic health department.

After the outbreak last year, the PMC had set up flu clinics to identify the Covid-19 infected patients after screening them on the basis of symptoms. Also, the screening facility was made available at the Covid Care Centres and those testing positive for the infection were directed to be in home isolation or institutional isolation at the Covid Care Centres started across the city.

“At present, the screening of patients with symptoms of Covid-19 is being done in civic and private clinics. We are getting the data of citizens reporting flu-like symptoms from the civic hospitals and we are tracking them. However, many citizens with Covid-19 symptoms are visiting private practitioners and the PMC is unable to track them due to the lack of information. Most of the private clinics were closed during the lockdown, so patients mostly visited only the civic facilities for screening but it wasn’t the situation now,” she said.

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The PMC doesn’t want Covid-19 suspects approaching in private clinics from out of the civic tracking system, Baliwant added.

Assistant Medical Officer Sanjeev Waware said the PMC has identified certain pockets where the number of newly infected patients is rising in large numbers. “The area has not been declared as micro-containment zones so far but the civic health department has decided to reach out to the private practitioners to help PMC keep track of the suspected patients so that the spread would be contained as early as possible,” he said.

In the ongoing surge, there has been an addition of over 100 new Covid19 patients in the last two days in eight of the 15 ward office area which includes 166 in Hadapsar-Mundhwa, 147 in Kothrud-Bavdhan, Dhankawadi-Sahakarnagar 138, 133 in Nagar Road-Vadgaonsheri, 127 in Warje-Karvernagar, 123 in Kasba-Vishrambaugwada, 117 in Sinhagad Road and 102 in Bibwewadi.