Pune: Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country last year, a city that has continuously made headlines for its high caseload is Maharashtra’s Pune.
Amid the second Covid wave across the country, Pune has, once again, emerged as one of the worst-affected districts. On Thursday, the district reported a total of 10,025 cases.
Officials and experts ThePrint spoke to attributed the high caseload to multiple factors including the proximity to Mumbai, a high floating population and the presence of congested areas.
“The industrialisation, congested localities, urbanisation and connectivity to Mumbai, air travel, rail travel, migrant population and everything put together has made Pune vulnerable,” Dr Subhash Salunkhe, the state advisor on Covid-19, told ThePrint.
Prone to infection?
Speaking about why Pune has been susceptible to the virus, officials and experts noted that the city has often been at the centre of many outbreaks, starting all the way back in the 19th century with the bubonic plague.
At the time when the plague was wreaking havoc in Mumbai, Pune was also simultaneously affected.
Pune Zilla Parishad CEO Ayush Prasad told ThePrint that “when Mumbai gets affected Pune gets affected”. “When the lockdown was announced, 7.5 lakh people came into Pune… These are people who work in Mumbai and rushed back to the 8 of 15 talukas of Pune. These were the initial cases from last year,” he said.
“We just have 10 international flight routes. So there’s also a very large number of people who travel to Mumbai and then come into Pune which has a large IT and Fintech sector… As a result of this, Pune’s administration ability to control the influx is very limited,” he added.
The high road density — Pune has four national highways traversing through it — means that it has a high floating population.
Dr Avinash Bhondwe, the Maharashtra president of the Indian Medical Association, said, “It is the same all over India in terms of Covid management, but the population density here is very high, next to Mumbai. This has increased in the last 15-20 years.”
Pune district comprises about 94.3 lakh people of which the “urban conglomeration” consisting of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, a town in the Pune urban area, contributes nearly 50 lakh. ThePrint in a report had noted that the population of the two urban centres had reached 50 lakh in 2011 within a span of 20 years.
Beyond the factors of urbanisation and migration, Salunkhe said, “Pune’s weather is conducive to viral multiplication, it is neither very hot nor cold, which has helped in viral multiplication. Pune also has a sizable health infrastructure which helps in early detection, diagnosis… much better than with the northern states and everything put together.”
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Multiple civic bodies handling management
As many as three civic bodies are at the helm of the battle against Covid in Pune. These include the Pune Zilla Parishad, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC).
While the Pune Zilla Parishad looks after the rural areas in the Pune district, the PMC and PCMC are in charge of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad areas. Then there are three cantonment boards, which are independently controlled defence establishments.
According to the Pune Zilla Parishad’s latest figures, of the 10,025 positive cases reported Thursday, 5,647 cases (56.3 per cent) had been detected in areas governed by PMC, 2,009 (20 per cent) in PCMC, 1,730 in the rural areas (17.2 per cent) and the rest in the areas governed by the nagar panchayats and the cantonment boards.
Asked about how the presence of multiple bodies has affected Covid response, the officials said that they work together as a team under the Divisional Commissioner, Saurabh Rao.
PMC additional commissioner Rubal Agarwal told ThePrint, “There is the issue of jurisdiction when it comes to contact tracing. Those who work here in the PMC governed areas live elsewhere… But we have a cell under the Divisional Commissioner, which has three civic bodies and the collectorate. So there is no coordination issue.”
Prasad also noted, “Coordination between agencies is extremely smooth because the divisional commissioner being a godfather-like figure, he takes everyone together, socially engages people, that helps in keeping people together.”
Despite this, however, differences have existed. Bhondwe pointed out an instance during September when the city was in the grips of the first wave.
“Back in September, Deputy CM Ajit Pawar wanted to call for a lockdown but the municipal commissioner had opposed it, but that was one of the only incidents where opinions differed. But otherwise all decisions are taken together because we all know each other very well, there is no reason for rivalry or anything like that,” he told ThePrint.
A source in one of the civic bodies, who didn’t wish to be named said, “An issue, however, has been that the Army doesn’t share data. I just read that the National Defence Academy has positive patients, but they never told us. Also in the worst of situations, they weren’t willing to help till now with extra beds.”
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How the civic bodies compare
Data from the PMC and the Zilla Parishad, which ThePrint could access, found that the two civic bodies had fared comparably on Covid management.
According to data provided by PMC, between March 2020 and March 2021, the number of contacts traced per person was anywhere between 9.03 and 15.35. Meanwhile, the positivity rate went from 4.12 per cent in March 2020 to 28.3 per cent in September 2020 to 6 per cent in January 2021 and 26 per cent in April.
In terms of testing, the city’s daily figure peaked at 26,000.
The source quoted above, however, said that up until recently, out of the 20,000 odd tests being conducted by the PMC, at least 18,000 would be voluntary and not mandated tests for high-risk or symptomatic contacts of positive cases.
Agarwal, however, refuted this. “After contact tracing, testing is done as per symptoms and following the standard operating procedures and protocol,” he said.
According to Pune Zilla Parishad officials, the positivity rate in the rural areas has been anywhere between 6 per cent and 31 per cent. In terms of contact tracing, the officials added, the civic body traces 12-13 people for every positive case, “a figure which goes up and down”.
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