Pune Municipal Corporation’s active Covid cases plunge 45% in 3 weeks

PUNE: The number of active Covid cases has dropped by over 45% in areas coming under the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) in the last three weeks, which health officials attributed to the ongoing restrictions and rigorous contact tracing.
The PMC areas had the highest active caseload of 56,636 on April 18. Since then, cases have been on a constant decline. On Monday, the active case count reached 30,836 — a decline of 45% or 25,800 cases in 22 days.
The data of the last one week shows that the PMC areas have been adding less than 3,000 cases daily since the last few days. The daily caseload was above 3,000 only on three days since May 1. On Monday, the city added just 1,165 fresh cases, which is the lowest since March 15 when the PMC limits had added 1,082 new infections.
Civic officials said the figures indicate that the drop in cases, which started in the third week of April, has continued in May. The daily positivity rate has also dropped in the last few days to below 20%. On Sunday, the positivity rate was 15.4%, while on the two previous days, it was around 16.5% and 14.65%. “Various restrictions imposed in the PMC areas and rigorous contact tracing have helped identify positive cases early on, thus restricting the spread,” a civic official said.
Sanjeev Wavre, assistant medical chief at PMC, said the city has not reported any significant jump in daily cases since the last three weeks. “In the beginning of April, the PMC areas were adding over 5,000 positive cases daily. On a few days, the tally had even jumped past 6,000,” he said.
The health data has revealed that the constant rise in recoveries and drop in daily cases have pushed the overall recoveries above 90% in the PMC limits. The city has so far recorded 4.46 lakh cases, while its recoveries stand at above 4.05 lakh.
A senior civic official said the cases have dropped in most of the civic ward limits. Some civic wards like Bhavani Peth, Wanowrie-Ramtekdi, Kasba-Vishrambaug, Dhole Patil Road, Shivajinagar-Ghole Road have added fewer than 1,000 cases in the last one week.