This is an archive article published on July 31, 2020
Pune: 50,000 cases likely by Aug 15, PCMC to focus on ‘super spreaders’ to curb spread of infection
"We have around 19,000 cases now. Our doubling rate is 12 days... we expect 50,000 cases by August 15 as we also expect to increase our testing," PCMC Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar told The Indian Express.
The PCMC chief said during the 10-day lockdown period earlier this month, the administration had stepped up testing. (Representational)
Struggling to stop the spread of coronavirus, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation on Thursday said by the end of August 15, the number of cases in the twin city will reach 50,000.
“We have around 19,000 cases now. Our doubling rate is 12 days… we expect 50,000 cases by August 15 as we also expect to increase our testing,” Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar told The Indian Express.
The PCMC chief said during the 10-day lockdown period earlier this month, the administration had stepped up testing. “From nearly 1,000 samples, we had started testing 3,000 samples every day. During this time, the doubling rate had increased from nine days to 11 days,” he said.
Currently, he said, PCMC was testing 4000 samples every day. “This will also increase. The doubling rate now is 14 to 15 days. We will conduct more testing. As a result, I think we will have close to 50,000 cases by August 15,” he said.
As to why the number of cases kept rising, Hardikar said the administration was trying to find out. “We have decided to focus on super spreaders like vendors, hawkers and shopkeepers. Every day, we are testing more than 100 of them. In a day or two, we will get the exact figures and will be able to analyse them…,” he said.
Hardikar said the civic body was also focusing on containment zones. “Earlier, we were setting up containment zones even when we had one case. Therefore, we had reached a figure of 1,500 containment zones. Now, we are back to macro containment zones, with five or more cases. As of now, we have 110 containment zones. These are hotspots from which have seen a major spike in cases,” he said.
The ruling BJP in PCMC, however, said the administration needed to do a better job in containing the pandemic. “Instead of repeatedly predicting such high figures and creating fear in the mind of people, who are already in a state of fear, the PCMC administration should tell us how it is going to contain the spread of the virus,” said BJP corporator Seema Savale, who is a former PCMC standing committee chairperson.
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BJP’s Pimpri-Chinchwad unit general secretary Babu Nair said,”Right from March, the signals were visible that cases will surge. However, the PCMC administration has failed to initiate large-scale detection and preventive measures. I have written several letters to the PCMC chief suggesting ways and measures to control the virus, but he has failed to respond to any one of them.”
BJP leader Laxman Jagtap said, “If the civic administration had taken strong steps in the beginning, we would not have seen such a situation. We are paying for their intial lethargy. I think we will also see one lakh cases in the near future. Not everything is lost though. We need effective steps to control the spread of the infection.”
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.
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The PCMC chief said during the 10-day lockdown period earlier this month, the administration had stepped up testing. (Representational)
