PMC urges Covid patients with mild symptoms to stay at care centre isolation facility

To provide isolation facility for Covid patients who have mild symptoms but are unable to be in home isolation due to space constraints, the Pune Municipal Corporation has decided to scale up its capacity of institutional isolation at Covid Care Centres (CCCs) to 7,850 beds, including a few beds with oxygen facility.

“There is no need for taking any permissions for Covid-19 patients to get admission in CCCs. They can merely submit their Covid-positive report,” said a civic officer.

Earlier, Covid-19 patients, who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms but had no separate room and toilet at home, had to register with the civic Disaster Management Cell and get a certificate from a medical practitioner for institutional isolation.

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As on April 7, the city had 46,071 active patients with around 39,000 of them in home isolation while 7,146 had been hospitalised.

However, the PMC has been receiving complaints that some of the asymptomatic patients have been violating home quarantine rule and freely moving in public places, leading to further spread of the infection. The civic body has now decided to put stickers on the door of residences of patients who are in home isolation, as well as put home quarantine stamps on their wrists, to easily identify them in public places.

There are nine Covid Care Centres in the city. Four of them — the CCC at Rakshaknagar sports complex in Kharadi, Bankar school in Hadapsar, Sant Dnyaneshwar Hostel in Yerwada and Gangadham Fire Station building in Bibwewadi have total bed capacity of 1,250. Currently, they collectively have 589 patients while 661 beds are vacant.

The civic administration has kept five centres ready for admission of patients as per demand. These are at Agriculture College hostel in Shivajinagar, Shri Shiv Chhatrapati sports complex hostel in Balewadi, SNDT College on Karve Road, Babasaheb Ambedkar hostel in Yerwada and Babasaheb Ambedkar hostel on Ghole Road. They have a total bed capacity of 1,900.

The PMC has started taking steps to set up 11 more CCCs in the city to increase bed capacity to 4,700 to keep patients in institutional isolation. They will be set up at Sinhagad Institute in Vadgaon Budruk, Trinity college in Kondhwa, CoEP hostel in Shivajinagar, Government Technical institute in Shivajinagar, Aundh ITI, Fergusson College hostel in Shivajinagar, NICMAR hostel in Balewadi, Nandan Actura in Baner, Ganesh Kala Krida Manch and the hall of Savitribai Phule Pune University.