Pimpri’s Covid-19 rate jumps from 5% to 23%, Commissioner orders test reports in 24 hours

PCMC Additional Health Chief Dr Pavan Salve said in the initial days of February, PCMC was conducting less than 1,000 tests. "This has now jumped to 1,800-2,000 a day," he said.

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Commuters are seen wearing masks on Tilak road in Pune. (Express Photo: Arul Horizon)

With the COVID-19 positivity rate jumping from five per cent to 23 per cent in the twin city, Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner Rajesh Patil has directed health officials to ensure that test reports are available within 24 hours.

PCMC has its testing lab at YCM hospital. The commissioner had directed that the lab should ensure the reports are available within 24 hours. “To reduce infection rate, it is important to conduct more tests. At the same time, the tests reports should be available on time. The health department should ensure that the tests reports are available as early as possible, could be within 24 hours,” Patil told health officials.

PCMC Additional Health Chief Dr Pavan Salve said in the initial days of February, PCMC was conducting less than 1,000 tests. “This has now jumped to 1,800-2,000 a day. It is going up every day as more and more patients are being detected positive,” he said.

Dr Salve said in January and early February, the positivity rate was five per cent or lower. “However, in the last week or so, the rate has jumped to 23-25 per cent. Our daily figures of COVID-19 positive were less than 100 in the initial days of this month. However, we are now getting 200 plus COVID cases a day. The figure is changing daily,” he said.

Dr Salve said overcrowding and lax attitude of citizens is resulting in more cases. “As cases were going down in December and January, people shunned masks and were lax towards use of sanitisers. There was overcrowding at market places and marriages. We have received complaints that at several marriages, people roamed around without masks. The situation was same in market places,” he said.

Dr Salve said flying squads have been put on the job to catch those flouting the COVID norms. “Besides, beat marshals are also being appointed,” he said.

Dr Salve said they are targetting crowded places like markets, marriage halls, shopping malls, hotels and restaurants. “We are keeping a close watch on movement of people at these places and catching them if found violating the norms,” he said.

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As of now, Dr Salve said, “There is no need to panic. Cases have not risen appreciably. We are alert and are keeping watch. The situation is being monitored constantly. We need citizens participation in controlling the spread of the virus. Masks are mandatory if a citizen is stepping out of his or her home.”

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Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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