Why Has Pune Emerged As The Epicentre of COVID-19 in India?
Shikha Chaurasia
Pune, September 10, 2020: Pune district’s Coronavirus disease (COVID19) count has crossed 2.06 lakh. The number of infected patients is more than that of Delhi and Mumbai.
Why does Pune have the highest count of COVID-19 cases in India?
Pune has a lesser population when compared with that of Delhi and Mumbai. It also has a lesser number of migrants, international travellers and reports lesser economic activity than that of Delhi and Mumbai. Pune is also not very densely packed. Despite all these factors, it has emerged as the worst affected district.
Therefore, the causes for Pune emerging as the epicentre of COVID-19 are-
1. Higher testing– Pune is carrying out the highest number of tests, even more than Mumbai in Maharashtra. This is one of the reasons why daily many cases of COVID-19 are emerging. About 14,000 tests per day are being done.
2. Extensive spread of the infection– During the recent serological survey in Pune city, it was found out that almost 50-60 percent of the population in the surveyed areas had been infected with the novel Coronavirus and not all of them were detected.
Same kind of surveys in other cities like Mumbai (40 per cent in some areas), Delhi (29 per cent), Ahmedabad and Chennai have indicated a lower degree of disease prevalence than Pune.
The larger degree of spread among Pune city’s population can be due to the city being one of the earliest in reporting COVID-19 cases.
3. Less effective/negligence towards isolation measures– Pune city had reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 9. Pune and Mumbai were reporting the highest number of cases in Maharashtra and Mumbai had also been the epicentre of COVID-19 as it was receiving more number of international travellers. But experts have pointed out that Pune surpassed Mumbai because isolation and contact tracing was not carried out effectively.
4. Poor compliance in social distancing norms– Many people pointed out that restriction guidelines and norms were not effectively enforced in Pune. One of the reason is also that the population of the city have shown disregard for social distancing norms. Pune has the highest number of people who have been fined for flouting COVID-19 guidelines.
The district administration officials that Pune’s condition is likely to improve soon as the daily growth in cases has slowed down a little. They have also predicted that by the end of the month the city will start showing a decline in COVID-19 cases.
