Maharashtra: From 1,200 to single-digit Covid cases, Nandurbar district turns around

NASHIK: Nandurbar district in north Maharashtra has charted a remarkable turnaround within a short span of time. From reporting a worrisome 1,200 infections daily in early April, Nandurbar is now registering Covid cases in single digit for the past few days.
In the past week, the daily new cases in the district have been less than10 on all days, except once.On June 7, 8 and 9, the daily cases registered were five, six and one respectively. On June 11, it was five. Only on June 10, the district had registered 12 cases.
What Nandurbar lacked in terms of medical infrastructure, it made up for in terms of planning. The local administration put its best foot forward to curb the spread of the infection. Learning from the first wave, they had already set up oxygen tanks and did not have to scramble for it. They called in doctors from Mumbai and made institutional quarantine mandatory.
District collector Rajendra Bharud told TOI, “It’s the teamwork that has yielded results for us. Our district presently has the lowest per million cases (73) in the state and our weekly positivity rate of 2.06% is one of the lowest in the state.”
The district had 174 active cases till June 11. Bharud said that the administration will continue to aggressively zero in the contacts of Covid positive patients and test them for the infection.
The health teams are reaching out to villages in remote parts of the mountainous terrain of the district to inoculate the beneficiaries at present.
Although the district did not register a significant surge in cases in the first wave last year, the district saw an exponential rise in cases in the second wave.