PUNE: Only 30,299 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR) in August — its lowest tally in the last six months or since the second surge of pandemic began in March. The region had added 34,000 cases in July and over 37,300 in June.
“There has been a constant drop in monthly additions of Covid-19 cases for the last four months. In April, the region had added over 3 lakh patients,” a health official said.
Data by the district health office has revealed that August recorded more recoveries as compared to addition of new patients. “With this, August has become the third month so far in 2021 recording more discharges of Covid-19 patients as against addition of new cases. Other two months were January and June,” the health official said, citing the data.
The official said daily cases in urban pockets has been on the decline since the last couple of months. “The daily positive cases in the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad municipal limits have stayed below 500 on most days in August. The new cases in the rural area have been staying between 500 and 1,000 every day. The share of positive cases from the rural parts was around 55% of the total cases of 30,299 recorded in August,” the official said.
Sanjeev Wavre, assistant medical chief, PMC, said despite a drop in daily cases, instructions had been issued to continue with stringent contract-tracing measures.
“Daily cases in PMC limits have stayed below 500 since the last few weeks. No any outbreak has been reported in any of the civic ward limits recently. However, we have continued to operate swab collection centres. The citizens are appealed to go for swab testing in case of symptoms. There is a need to be cautious, especially in the backdrop of relaxations and festive season,” Wavre said.
An official from the health department said the daily caseload in the rural parts had been above 500, prompting the administration to opt for concentrated efforts as a part of its Covid mitigation efforts.
Testing breaches 70 lakh-mark
The Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR) on Wednesday added 1,085 new cases of Covid-19 as against 730 recoveries, with the testing increasing above 32,500, including more than 16,300 tests from the rural areas.
The region’s tally of sample testing increased above 70 lakh on Wednesday evening. The daily testing has been ramped up in the region since the last few days. A report released by district health officer Bhagwan Pawar stated that tally of positive cases increased to 11.16 lakh on Wednesday evening, while the recoveries jumped past10.88 lakh.
The region’s active caseload reached 9,327 on Wednesday. Twelve more deaths were recorded in the region in the last 24 hours.
