With 1,931 new cases Monday, Pune has now overtaken Delhi to become the place with the maximum number of people infected with the novel coronavirus. Monday’s addition took Pune’s total cases to 1,75,105, leaving Delhi’s 1,74,748.
Pune already has the highest number of active cases in the country. It currently has 52,172 patients, much more than about 20,000 in Mumbai and about 15,000 in Delhi.
The Pune administration has been struggling to check the spread of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic in March. The surge has put the administration on digits, but its efforts have not yielded results.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar has been reviewing the situation weekly. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had to come to pull up the administration, and request it to check the spread of the virus.
The PMC has been the most affected of the civic bodies in the district. It followed by neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), where the spread of the infection was slow in the beginning.
The increasing number of cases has also wrenched the health infrastructure. The authorities had to decide that patients with mild symptoms or no symptoms must be kept in home isolation.
The state government set up two gigantic COVID treatment facilities in Pune recently. A collective capacity to treat 1,600 critical patients, including provision of 400 ICU beds. Both the facilities were started last week PMC and PCMC.
