Pune: Amid rising COVID-19 cases and citizens flouting social distancing norms, lockdown is all set to be reimposed in Pune, Pimpri- Chinchwad and a few other parts of the district starting July 13.
Meanwhile, BJP MLA Siddharth Shirole from Pune's Shivajinagar slammed the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra Government and said that the state leadership has failed in preparing Pune for the spike in COVID-19 infections. He said that the state govt has been misleading people with projections and stats of preparedness. Shirole added that the govt has enforced a lockdown, only to disguise its failures.
In a long thread on Twitter, Shirole said, "The graph of building a city’s medical infrastructure should always be higher than the progressive cases of #COVID19 infection. #LockDown is not a remedy, it is supposed to be an intervention to give administration time to better equip & strengthen medical infrastructure."
"It’s been more than 100 days since we had #LockDown1 and its unfortunate that even after me raising concerns for weeks now, the state leadership has failed woefully in preparing #Pune for this spike in #COVID19 infections, forecasted by most epidemiology studies & models."
"Pune’s COVID Warriors including our very own Mayor have done a commendable job in helping curtail the spread of virus. I truly believe that 1000 cases/day for city the size of #Pune is alarming only because of the lack of hospital beds & infrastructure for early treatments."
"Enforcing the #Lockdown to disguise failures of the state government and administration is iniquitous to the citizens of our city who were slowly getting back to normalcy. The LockDown has now become a compulsion, which could have easily been prevented with proactive action."
Lashing out at Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Shirole said that Thackeray stays in the neighbouring city and yet has not made a single visit to Pune in the past 100 days to oversee the preparedness or even encourage the COVID warriors. "Let alone a visit to #Pune, Hon CM @OfficeofUT ji has not had a single update or review call / video conference with elected representatives of the City who are working on the ground during this unprecedented Pandemic. Even emails from me are yet to receive a reply," he added.
Meanwhile, with 1,598 people testing positive for novel coronavirus, Pune district saw its highest jump in COVID-19 cases, taking the total count to 35,997, an official said on Friday.
The death toll crossed the 1000-mark and reached 1,007 as 28 people succumbed to the infection during the day, he added.
