Pune district has started witnessing rise in Covid-19 infections with active case count touching the 2,000-mark on Sunday. Around half of the active cases were detected under the jurisdiction of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), which has registered daily positivity rate of above two per cent. Only one Omicron infected patient was found in the district on Monday even as 43 of overall 167 active cases of the new variant were reported from Pune.
As on December 27, number of active Covid-19 case in Pune district stood at 1,979 with 990 cases in PMC, 436 in Rural, 411 in Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) area, 107 in Nagar Palika area and 35 in Cantonment area.
After witnessing a peak in April, Pune had been seeing a decline in the number of newly infected Covid patients. The active patient count dropped below 2,000 in November and after fluctuating for over a month, has again touched the 2,000-mark.
The district administration has issued prohibitory orders against gathering of five or more persons in public places from 9 pm to 6 am after noticing the increase in Covid-19 cases, including that of Omnicron variant. “The Covid situation in the city is under control. The active cases have been in three digits for long and are increasing slowly,” said mayor Murlidhar Mohol.
There is an alert due to Omicron variant, he said, adding that since vaccination rate is high in the city, “hopefully, there will not be much impact of the Covid wave now”.
On Monday, the district registered 158 new Covid-19 patients which included 80 in PMC, 38 in PCMC, 27 in rural part of the district, eight in Nagar Palikas and five in Cantonment areas. One death was recorded in PCMC area on the day while 183 patients recovered from the infection.
As per the Pune Zila Parishad, a total of 19,237 persons have succumbed to Covid till now while 11,41,556 of the 11,62,740 infected persons have recovered.
The rise in active cases coincides with the district administration’s effort to bring life in the city to normal with reopening of schools and other activities while ensuring adherence to Covid norms.
Maharashtra reported 26 new cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 on Monday, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 167, according to the data released by the state’s Public Health Department.
Out of these, 72 patients have been discharged following negative RT-PCR test.
Of the 26 new cases, 11 were reported from Mumbai followed by five from Panvel Municipal Corporation, four from Thane Municipal Corporation in Raigad, two from Nanded and one each from Nagpur, Palghar, Bhiwandi Nizampur Municipal Corporation (BNMC) and Pune Rural.
Four of these patients are below the age of 18 while two are above 60. Fourteen patients are male while 12 are female. Barring two, rest have international travel history. The remaining two patients are high-risk contacts of an international traveller.
Nineteen of the patients are fully vaccinated while four minors along with three others patients are unvaccinated.
Twenty one of these patients are asymptomatic and five have mild symptoms.
Currently, out of the 167 Omicron cases, Mumbai has 84 cases followed by 19 in Pimpri-Chinchwad, 17 in Pune Rural, seven each in Pune Municipal Corporation and Thane Municipal Corporation, five in Satara, five in Osmanabad, five in Panvel Municipal Corporation, three in Nagpur, two each in Kalyan-Dombivali, Aurangabad and Nanded and one each in Akola, Buldhana, Latur, Vasai-Virar, Navi Mumbai, Mira-Bhayandar, Ahmednagar, Palghar and BNMC.
The cases in Mumbai also include 19 patients detected at the international airport while screening.
