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As the number of active Covid patients in the city rises, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Tuesday extended the operations of its 800-bed jumbo Covid hospital for three months. Besides, it will set up five Covid Care Centres (CCC) with a total of 1,050 beds for isolating patients who have mild or no symptoms but no facility available for home isolation.
During the first Covid wave in 2020, the state government had set up jumbo Covid hospitals, which were handed over to PMC for operations.
While a private agency was given the work for setting up necessary basic infrastructure, including beds, another was given the contract to provide healthcare staff for the hospital. Two separate agencies were appointed for providing medicines for treatment of patients and maintenance of medical equipment.
“There is a Covid surge and we need to keep jumbo hospital open to cater to the load on existing health infrastructure. The agreement for operations of agency was coming to an end. Thus, it has been decided to extend it till March-end,” said Hemant Rasane, chairperson of PMC’s standing committee.
The PMC had made budgetary provision of Rs 75 crore for running the jumbo hospital and it would be put to use now, he said.
The PMC is likely to restart operations of the jumbo hospital soon with 100 beds, which would be increased depending on the need.
On Tuesday, the PMC registered daily positivity rate of 23.09 per cent with 3,459 newly infected patients detected out of the 14,983 tests performed.
The hospitalisation rate has further declined to 4.89 per cent with 38 people on ventilator and 146 on oxygen support. One patient succumbed to the viral infection taking the toll to 9,130. The city has 487 ventilator beds and 4,033 oxygen beds vacant as of now. The number of active cases stands at 19,452.
