Wipro Hospital in Hinjewadi to shut down

Taking into account the decline in the number of Covid cases in Pune district, the Pune Zilla Parishad (ZP) has decided to shut down the Covid-designated Wipro Hospital at Hinjewadi. The hospital, once a Wipro building, was converted into a Covid-19 hospital to tackle the rising infections. Now, the centre has been defunct since December 2021 and it will be permanently shut down.

Ayush Prasad, the ZP chief executive officer (CEO), told TOI that we had suspended operations at the Wipro Hospital since December 31, 2021 due to lower number of Covid hospitalisations and infections.

In a meeting held on Wednesday, the Pune Zilla Parishad decided to shut down Wipro hospital due to the ongoing dip in coronavirus cases. Prasad said that there are many vacant beds in government and private hospitals, prompting the authorities to take this call.

The 450-bed hospital was inaugurated in June, 2020, when the district was facing an extreme shortage of beds.

Hospital to be returned to Wipro
After being shut, the centre will be returned to Wipro as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for IT development, Hindustan Times (HT) reported. The equipment installed in the hospital would be distributed to district, sub-district hospitals and other primary health care centres, according to the requirement.

The ZP chief executive officer further said, “With cases having fallen in Pune rapidly, and empty beds in all licensed government and private hospitals, the hospital was placed under suspended animation from December 31, 2021.”

“The shutting of the hospital represents the success of our vaccination programme and our ability to build up the requisite infrastructure facilities in existing hospitals,” he was quoted by HT as saying.

Hospital admitted only symptomatic patients
Further elaborating how the hospital functioned during Covid, Prasad told HT that they had appointed a hospital manager and the hospital had a case fatality rate eight times lower than that of the district. The hospital has admitted 6,865 patients to date and has reported 11 deaths till now. India Today