With Covid-19 positivity rate in Pune witnessing an upward trend for the past six weeks, with this week’s being the highest, the number of micro containment zones in the city has also risen — from 268 to 325 in just a week.
The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had declared 268 micro containment zones in the city on April 2. These included buildings, housing societies and localities.
On April 8, there were 325 micro containment zones in the city with the numbers set to further rise owing to the ongoing Covid-19 surge. As of now, a total of 143 housing societies, 140 buildings and 42 localities have been declared micro containment zones by the civic administration.
Going by the PMC records, the weekly positivity rate has been increasing in the last six weeks. While it was 9.2 per cent from February 11 to 17 when the surge began, it touched 25.58 per cent from April 1 to April 7.
The number of patients who tested positive between February 11 and 17 were 2129 from the 23,027 tested that week, but the PMC found 36,029 Covid-19 positive patients from April 1 to 7 from the 1,40,823 tested in the week.
“The PMC is testing over 20,000 persons per day. The positivity rate in the city continues to be high,” said municipal commissioner Vikram Kumar while giving information on the Covid19 situation in the city.
The death rate, meanwhile, is low in the current Covid19 surge. In April last year, the mortality rate due to Covid19 was 5.68 per cent while it has come down to 1.82 per cent now. “The mortality rate during February this year was 0.55 per cent, March recorded 0.66 death rate and in April till now it is 0.74. It means 99 per cent of those infected now are getting cured,” Kumar said.
Meanwhile, the PMC is scaling up bed capacity and has been able to double it in the last 15 days. The PMC had 3,300 beds on March 21 which included 2,200 Oxygen and 290 ventilator beds. The bed capacity has been increased to 7,500 beds, including 4,800 Oxygen beds and 551 ventilator beds in the city now. “The PMC is further trying to increase the number of beds for Covid19 patients and will take the bed capacity to 8,300 beds in one week,” he said, adding the PMC had got 7,200 beds last year after making the private hospitals 80 per cent beds reserved for Covid19 patients while the capacity would be 8,300 beds by next week.
The PMC has declared six private hospitals as reserved only for Covid-19 patients while taking over 150 bed ESI hospital for operations. The civic body will also be getting 40 ICU beds of Army hospital for Covid19 patients.
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