PUNE: The number of Covid cases has significantly reduced in Pune, but the city hospitals are still recording an increase in critical patients from neighbouring high-caseload districts of Sangli, Satara and Kolhapur.
Some hospitals estimated a ratio of 70:30, while referring to current hospitalisation levels — 70% of admissions being from other districts.
Govind Kulkarni, senior consultant physician with the Sahyadri super-speciality Hospital, Nagar Road, said, “We are now receiving complicated Covid-19 cases from districts such as Nashik, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Solapur, Kolhapur and other parts of western Maharashtra. These are mostly post-Covid patients having bilateral pneumonia with some other system complications needing ICU care, ventilators etc.”
Kulkarni added, “Out of the total Covid admissions at our hospital, 30-40% of patients would be from Pune. The rest are outstation patients. This trend has been prominent over the last two months as some districts are reporting more cases than Pune, which also has a higher recovery rate.”
He said Pune receives a lot of patients as it has fully equipped Covid care centres, ICU units and specialist doctors.
Kapil Zirpe, a member of the Pune Covid task force and head of the neurotrauma unit of Ruby Hall Clinic, said, “Most admitted Covid cases at our hospital are severe and complicated cases from districts of Ahmednagar and Satara. They contribute to around 70% of admissions currently.” Sanjay Pujari, from the ICMR national task force on clinical research for Covid and director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases, Pune, said the city is currently seeing a significant number of patients coming in from other districts.
“Conversely, during the peak, cases were predominantly only from Pune. Inter-district travel has opened up, which could be one of the reasons for the increase in outstation patients,” he said.
A source from Jehangir Hospital said, “Though Covid admissions are only in single digits, at least 50% admissions are from outstation.”
Pune zilla parishad's CEO Ayush Prasad said 30% of all hospital admission in the district currently may be outstation patients, with 10% at medical colleges in rural Pune.
“Even non-Covid patients from some districts in Marathwada, Pune division and parts of Ahmednagar come for treatment here via referrals and tie-ups between Pune hospitals and those in smaller cities,” he said.
