Pune delays school reopening, city may follow suit

PUNE/MUMBAI: The state government was toying with the idea of extending the closure of schools in Mumbai further to contain the spread of swine flu on a day in which the administration in Pune extended the date of re-opening of schools and colleges to August 23.

State health minister Rajendra Shingane said in Mumbai that the decision to close public places like schools and cinemas has ���restricted spread of H1N1 in Pune and it will be the same in Mumbai.���

The government would soon decide on extending the closure period of schools, he said. On August 12, the state government had ordered closure of schools in Mumbai for a week.

In Pune, after another death on Sunday night took the city���s swine flu death toll to 13, the administration extended the date of re-opening of schools and urged people to avoid processions and gatherings during the 10-day Ganesh festival beginning August 23.

Schools and colleges were to reopen on August 20. Many schools may stay shut further owing to the Ganesh festival.
However, despite the 13th death due to swine flu, life was slowly returning to normal in Pune city. Briefing reporters, Pune district collector Chandrakant Dalvi said that the number of people undergoing screening for the H1N1 virus has come down substantially.

While 27,288 people had come for screening on August 15, the number fell to 13,442 on the 16th and further to 8155 on Monday. In Mumbai, the health minister said, 2,895 people were screened so far and only 185 have tested positive.
Pune���s 13th victim of the H1N1 virus was 36-year-old Beena Sanjay Gonsalves of Vimannagar, who was admitted to Sassoon hospital on August 13. She died in the hospital on Sunday night.

���Today (on Monday), 26 people are suspected to have caught the flu. Of these, two are on ventilator at the Sassoon Hospital and six more at Sahyadri hospital,��� Mr Dalvi said.

Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said in New Delhi that schools should dispense with morning assembly meetings. He said the new guidelines being readied by the health ministry will also make it mandatory for class teachers to check each student for symptoms of the viral disease. The guidelines is expected to be issued in a couple of days.

Some trade organisations and wholesale markets in Pune, which had declared a longer-than-normal Independence Day weekend, opened on Monday although it was a weekly off for several markets in the city. The wholesale fruit and vegetable markets, which had declared a three-day closure, opened on Sunday and are back to normal, officials of the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) said.