Pune: About 850 shopkeepers from Laxmi Road area were screened under the special COVID-19 testing quota for the trader community, out of which 26 tested positive for the disease and have been sent to isolation centres.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) in coordination with the Federation of Trade Associations of Pune (FATP) has started an antigen testing centre in Peth areas. Rubal Agrawal, Additional Commissioner of PMC tweeted about the special drive organised with the help of FATP President Fattechand Ranka and Secretary Mahendra Pitaliya.  Agrawal in her tweet has mentioned that 26 out of 850 shopkeepers were found COVID-19 positive and later isolated.

Pune Divisional Commissioner Saurabh Rao, on Friday, had informed that 250 shopkeepers in Bhavani Peth areas were tested and only 4 had been found positive for COVID-19. These four persons were asymptomatic.

The new containment strategy of the district and civic administration includes allocating a testing quota for potential super-spreaders of the virus. Under this quota, medical shop employees, vegetable and fruits vendors and street vendors will be tested for COVID-19 positivity to break the chain of coronavirus infections. Higher number of contact tracing, especially those in the high-risk contact group, gives more time to the patient and administration for taking precautionary measures and arranging for oxygenated and ventilator beds if required.

Rao has said that conducting COVID-19 tests for super-spreader elements is the administration's priority. If these tests are not conducted in time then the super-spreaders won’t be identified in the early stage and as a result they would act as carriers of the coronavirus. Samples of shopkeepers in the city are being collected randomly on a daily basis.

In Pune city, 6,151 citizens were tested on Friday (July 31) out of which 818 were found to be COVID-19 positive. The total number of active cases in the city is 17,820. The total number of deaths reported on Friday was 28.