Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said the administration had been directed to take all necessary steps, including strict action against those violating Covid safety norms (File) THE DISTRICT administration has started making preparations to restart the jumbo Covid hospital at College of Engineering Pune in Shivajinagar, as number of cases continue to rise in the city.
“There is a Covid-19 surge and many patients are getting hospitalised. There is no shortage of beds as of now. However, the administration has decided to restart the jumbo facility soon,” said Pune Divisional Commissioner Saurabh Rao. The jumbo facility, set up at Shivajinagar, was intact, he said, adding the administration recently carried out a structural and electrical audit of the facility by IIT-Delhi. “We got a favourable audit report. The agency that created the set-up has agreed to provide the facility at one-third of the cost charged in the past. There is a need to appoint an operator for the facility and the process for the same has begun,” he said.
On restarting the second jumbo facility in Pimpri-Chinchwad, Rao said the PCMC conveyed that hospital beds in its jurisdiction had been increased by 400, so there was no immediate need. The structure was ready and could be used any time as per requirement, he added.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said the administration had been directed to take all necessary steps, including strict action against those violating Covid safety norms. “The implementation of safety norms should be done strictly and violators should be penalised,” he said.
Earlier, Mayor Murlidhar Mohol, during the Covid-19 review meeting, urged the authorities to once again direct private hospitals to reserve beds for Covid-19 treatment, considering the surge. He also demanded to increase the testing capacity in the city so that maximum patients were identified and isolated to contain the spread of the infection.
The state government was planning to once again rope in Indian Institute of Science Education and Research and NARI to undertake sample testing so to scale up capacity, Rao said.
On Friday, the PMC registered daily positivity rate of 20.98 per cent after 1,805 new cases were identified. Thus, active cases have increased to 9,740 while the death of eight patients took the toll to 4,925. Out of 2,14,830 reported cases, 2,00,165 have recovered.