Around 900 Covid-free villages in rural Nashik

NASHIK: Around 900 villages in Nashik rural have remained Covid-free for the last 10 days which is a welcome sign for the zilla parishad (ZP) administration.
Of the total 1,926 villages across 15 talukas of the district almost every village has had a Covid positive patient. However, on Friday, the number of Covid-free villages has gone up to 889, with the highest 117 out of 144 villages in Peth taluka.
“Except the remote areas of Peth, Surgana, Trimbakeshwar talukas of Nashik district almost every village has had a Covid patient. Some of them have had a higher number of cases. But the number of Covid-free villages have now gone up from 300 to about 900 and this is because the number of new cases has gone down owing to the decline in the number of new cases during the past fortnight,” Dr Kapil Aher, health officer of Nashik zilla parishad, said.
In rural areas people faced problems during the second wave in getting themselves tested. While home isolation was allowed for asymptomatic or people with mild symptoms, it was not feasible for those living in small houses and in joint families.
“Besides people were also reluctant to move away from their homes to Covid centres . Due to this the ZP had set up centres at schools in the villages where positive patients admitted themselves while they were being treated by a group of doctors and health staff during their isolation,” Aher said.
The worst affected talukas like Sinnar, Niphad, Nandgaon and Chandwad also now have good number of Covid-free villages as no active case has been reported there in the past ten days.
The situation in Deola is not that good as only eight out of the total of 50 villages are Covid-free. “The spread of infection was high due to which it is taking more time for the villages to get into the category. It should be noted that number of active cases have dropped and they are now scattered. The picture will change in few days,” Aher said.
Across the district the tribal talukas have higher number of Covid-free villages. After Peth, Surgana and Trimbakeshwar have 113 and 96 Covid-free villages, respectively.