PUNE: The gradual decline in the daily Covid-19 cases in Pune Municipal Corporation limits has led to a sharp drop in micro-containment zones in the city.
As of Sunday, PMC limits had 28 micro-containment zones – nearly 20 times less than in April, when the city had 497 zones.
Seven of 15 wards under the PMC have zero containments zones and, of the rest, Sinhagad Road and Dhankawdi-Sahakarnagar wards each have nine zones – the highest in the city.
As per PMC norms, any housing or commercial complex with more than one building, with 20 or more positive cases, will be declared a micro-containment zones.
When the cases had started to peak, many such containment zones were declared in areas like Kothrud, Hadapsar, Satara Road and Ahmednagar Road.
As per data released by Pune Smart City development Corporation and PMC, Kothrud, Warje, Dhole Patil Road, Dhanori, Kalas, Bhavani Peth, Bibvewadi, Kondhwa, and Yerawada have no micro-containment zones and four wards – Kasba Peth, Aundh-Baner, Shivajinagar-Ghole Road and Nagar Road-Wadgaonsheri – have one each.
The Wanworie-Ramtekdi ward has two containment zones, while Hadapsar-Mundhwa has four zones.
“The decision to reduce or increase the containment zones is taken based on the recent history of positive cases in those areas,” Sanjeev Wavare, assistant medical officer of PMC, explained.
“After the lockdown and the restrictions in movement, the positive cases across PMC limits areas have gone down.
This decline is reflected in the changes in containment zones,” Wavare added.
After the start of the pandemic, PMC had first sealed Peth areas (Maharshinagar to RTO and parts of Kondhwa) on April 6, 2020.
A week later, some other areas including Nagar Road, Parvati Darshan and Patil Estate were sealed.
Over the next eight months, most parts of the city had containment zones.
On December 31, 2020, PMC removed all containment zones till the second wave started in March.