The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has said that bodies of Covid-19 victims dying at home must be handled by relatives themselves while the civic body will help them in the process. The ward officer for each locality will provide the body bag and four PPE kits to the relatives, authorities have said. They should wear the kit while packing the body in the bag and loading it onto the hearse van.
They should also upload the medical certificate specifying the cause of death, along with their insurance form for Covid-related duties, on the PMC's website to receive a cremation pass, PMC Chief Engineer Srinivas Gangaram Kandul has said. The Aadhar cards of the dead person and of those relatives handling the body are also to be submitted in the process.
"The local ward officer and the ward medical officer must post the details of the death on the Pune Municipal Corporation's WhatsApp group created for the purpose," Mr Kandul said in a video message.
On reaching the crematorium, however, officials will handle the body, including unkoading from the vehicle, he said. The relatives will received the remains around an hour after cremation. "Not more than 10 people will be allowed at the crematorium," Mr Kandul said.
Pune recorded the highest-ever single-day spike yesterday at 8,553 new infections and 31 deaths. This is only marginally lower than the all-time high for any city set by Delhi on November 11 (8,593 cases). The city contributed almost 21 per cent of all cases in Maharashtra and over 11.82 per cent to India's figures.
It has so far registered 45,317 cases per million population, which is considerably higher than the state's average of 21,321 cases per million.
Overall, Maharashtra recorded a total 39,544 cases with 227 deaths. India today saw the biggest daily surge in Covid cases since early October with 72,330 fresh infections reported since yesterday, taking the overall figure to 1,22,21,665. This surge is also the highest since October 11 when 74,383 infections were recorded. On March 28, the state crossed 27 lakh cases.
The Maharashtra government has warned of another lockdown if there is no respite from this resurgence of infections. Several districts of the state, including Pune, have been put under partial lockdown and night curfew, with schools and other educational establishments remaining shut.
The Nandurbar district administration has, for instance, imposed a complete lockdown in the district from midnight of March 31 to April 15. The decision came after the district began recording over 400 daily cases.
Pune district received 3.25 lakh vaccine doses on Wednesday evening. The government plans to step up the number of vaccination centres from the present 318 to 600 in the next 3-4 days. Till now, the district has vaccinated 7.68 lakh persons, including healthcare workers, frontline workers, and senior citizens.
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