NAGPUR: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has detected around 2,100 ‘superspreaders’ (asymptomatic Covid positive people), and contained spread of Covid-19 before unlocking.
Continuing with this drive, the civic body tested 90 coolies at the main railway station on Tuesday.
NMC’s steps to curb Covid spread.With second wave of the pandemic receding from beginning of May, NMC was expecting unlocking by the state government from June 1.
NMC additional municipal commissioner Ram Joshi told TOI, “Owners or staffers of essential or non-essential shops or restaurants may infect people in large numbers in case they are carrying the virus.
The same is the situation with hawkers, vendors and home delivery boys.
Therefore, we tested around 70,000 such people engaged in commercial establishments in the city in third and fourth week of May.
We got help from police as well as associations related to these commercial establishments.” Municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B had made testing mandatory for these people once in a fortnight.
Joshi said around 3% of these 70,000 people tested positive.
“Timings of essential shops were increased from 11am to 2pm from June 1.
Also, non-essential shops were allowed to reopen from June 1.
Testing helped contain the spread, as around 2,100 were identified and isolated.
It also helped them get early treatment,” he said.
Despite increase in timings of essential shops and resumption of non-essential shops on June 1, cases have continued to drop in the city.
There were 190 cases in the city on May 31, which dropped to 81 on June 8.
On Tuesday, a team of NMC Mangalwari Zone in association with Central Railway conducted tests on 245 people, 155 passengers and 90 coolies, at the main railway station.
The main idea behind testing coolies was they meet and interact with multiple people at railway station on daily basis.
Divisional railway manager Richa Khare, senior divisional commercial manager Krishnakant Patil, divisional commercial manager Vipul Sarkar, Dinesh Nagdive, Pravin Rokde, and Purushottam Kamalkar extended necessary help to the NMC team for the tests.
Under the guidance of assistant commissioner Vijay Humne, the team of NMC that conducted the tests comprised Dr Radhika Brijwar, Dr Roshan Ingle, Dr Vivek Nimje, Dr Nitesh Kanoje, Dr Gunjan Malviya, Dr Snehal Pawar, Karan Gupta, Tarun Nirmal and Anirban Ghosh.
Collector Ravindra Thakre has started visiting major towns of the district and holding meetings with officials to prevent rise in cases.
He visited Kamptee, Butibori, Hingna, Wadi, Wanadongri, Saoner, Khapa, Mohpa and Kalmeshwar.
A team of 52 members has also continued visiting villages in rural parts of the district and monitoring the situation.
As per press release of the district administration, necessary preparations are on for projected third wave.
“There were 989 beds for Covid patients in the district in April last year.
Number of beds increased to 7,730 as on May 30 this year.
Oxygen beds were 805 in April last year which are now around 4,810.
Number of beds in ICU has increased by 92%.
The ICU beds increased from 184 in April last year to 2,314.
Similarly, beds with ventilators increased from 87 to 579,” the press release said.
The press release added capacity of oxygen increased from 58 metric tonne last year to 160 metric tonne this year.