Pune Municipal Corporation fears rise in cases post-palkhi

PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) fears the city may see a further rise in Covid cases after the palkhi and the daily detections might be around 1,000 by mid-July. The city has of late been seeing a case spike.
Civic authorities fear that the city might start witnessing a further rise in Covid cases after this year's palkhi and the daily detections might be around 1,000 by the middle of July.

The city has of late been registering a spike in Covid cases. A senior official in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Tuesday said once the warkaris reached the city with the palkhis (palanquins) of Sant Dnyaneshwar Maharaj from Alandi and Sant Tukaram from Dehu on Wednesday, there might be a further spike in the daily Covid cases.
This time, warkaris from across the state and also from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat are participating in the procession to Pandharpur after a gap of two years due to the Covid pandemic.
The PMC official said as part of the preparations to tide over any rise in cases, the civic body has kept its Covid facilities on a standby mode and would recruit manpower only if the rate of hospitalization increased.
Dr Sanjeev Wavare, the assistant health officer in the PMC, said, "There has been a rise in new Covid cases since the past 2-3 weeks. We anticipate that after palkhi, the number of daily cases might touch the 1,000-mark by mid-July. The lowest number (six) of daily Covid cases was reported on April 11."
He said, "If the rate of Covid patients needing hospital care increased, the PMC has the Naidu hospital and two facilities in Baner. There are other hospitals as well providing Covid care. If needed, the hospitals will be ready in a month's time. However, we do not expect the rate of hospitalisation to rise anytime soon."
On Tuesday, Pune district reported 420 new Covid cases. But there was no casualty. Only 82 of the 2,310 Covid patients are in hospital. At present, the hospitalization rate of the Covid patient is 3.5%. On Monday, the city had reported 299 new Covid cases. This was the highest in the past three months.
Currently, the city has about 1,401 Covid patients and 55 of them are in hospital. Among the hospitalized patients, one person is on a ventilator, five are on oxygen and the rest are recuperating on non-oxygen beds.
Dr Wavare said, "The positivity rate has, however, increased to about 18-19%. We are sticking to the ICMR guidelines in terms of testing. We had reported one Covid casualty a few days ago. But it was an incidental finding, as the person who tested positive was brought dead. Apart from that, we have not reported any Covid-related death in the past two months."