PUNE: The district health authorities on Tuesday directed the officials in rural areas to ramp up testing to 2,500 per day in each taluka before the Ganapati immersion day because of inbound and outbound movement of large number of people.
“We have directed the 13 talukas to carry out at least 2,500 tests daily. This would include the high- and low-risk contacts,” said an official of the district health department.
Additional chief secretary, health, Dr Pradeep Vyas on Monday told all the collectors to ramp up testing. The district’s daily testing dipped to 18,000 this against 25,000-30,000 the previous week.
“There has been a consistent decline in tests not just in the state but in the district, too. Pune collector Rajesh Deshmukh directed all the health officials in a meeting to ensure that enough testing was done in the rural areas, with a lot of floating population because of the festivities. We want to ensure that anyone having any Covid symptoms are immediately tested and isolated,” said the health official.
With five days remaining for visarjan (immersion), intensive tests are being conducted at various places in the state. Last week, the rural areas in Pune registered 4.6% weekly positivity (WPR) against less than 4% in the city areas.
The district health officials told all 104 laboratories in Pune to complete their data entry before the weekly Covid-19 review meeting to be chaired by the deputy chief minister, Ajit Pawar, either on Friday or Saturday. The delay in data entry of negative reports from the laboratories affected the overall WPR of the district in the note given to the state cabinet.
