Pune: COVID-19 patients in the city will get additional 9,000 isolation beds in six more COVID Care Centres (CCC) being established in the city by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) in the next ten days. Out of these, the biggest CCC at Viman Nagar with 3200 beds capacity was made functional on Friday. 

Apart from the Viman Nagar centre, the remaining five CCC are coming up at Fergusson College hostel, Agriculture College, Pune University, MIT and Bankar School in Hadapsar. These centres will be used as isolation facilities for COVID-19 positive patients with very mild symptoms or for those who are asymptomatic. The patients will be kept for ten days in these centres after they are identified to be COVID positive.

The Fergusson College facility will have 350 beds. The hostel is being sanitized as part of precautionary measures before starting the centre. 

The Viman Nagar CCC facility – which originally is a building under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scheme – is ready for use from Friday. Deputy Mayor Saraswati Shendge, Leader of the House Dheeraj Ghate, former Corporator Yogesh Mulik, PMC’s Anti-Encroachment Department head Madhav Jagtap, Assistant Municipal Commissioner Rajesh Bankar and Corporators Rahul Bhandare, Arjun Jagtap, Mahesh Galande.

This Viman Nagar CCC is one of the biggest in the city with a total capacity of 3,200 beds and separate accommodation arrangements for doctors and patients. The building has 700 flats, and five beds have been arranged in each flat. Patients with mild and severe symptoms will be segregated. The Bhartiya Jain Sanghatana (BJS) has arranged for food for doctors, while the ISKCON team will be providing food for patients free of cost. PMC also plans to get oxygen and ventilator support beds in this centre in the near future.

So far, almost 32,000 patients have tested positive for coronavirus. Out of these 10644 patients are still under treatment, while 20,334 patients have recovered from the disease.