Eastern Cape, Gauteng face dire hospital bed shortage
Gauteng and the Eastern Cape are set to run out of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients within the next month, according to health minister Zweli Mkhize.
“We have now reached the surge. The storm that we have consistently warned South Africans about is now arriving,” the minister said in an address to the National Assembly on Wednesday.
SA confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on March 5 and had by Tuesday recorded more than 215,000 cases, making it the country with the 14th biggest caseload, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
After an initially slow start, Gauteng is now in the midst of a rapid surge in infections: its Covid-19 hospital admissions have more than tripled in the past fortnight, rising from 956 on June 24 to 3,167 on July 8. The figures include patients admitted to both public and private hospitals.
The province has reported more than 71,400 confirmed cases, and is expected to overtake the Western Cape, which currently has the biggest tally, within a matter of days..
The past few days have seen reports of several public figures affected by the disease including Western Cape premier Alan Winde and his North West counterpart Job Mokgoro, both of whom say they have mild symptoms and are continuing to work remotely.
North West co-operative governance MEC Gordon Kegakilwe, Langeberg mayor Henry Jansen and the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal spokesperson Ricardo Mthembu have all died of Covid-19 in recent days.
The government’s latest modelling projects fewer hospital beds would be needed than originally anticipated, but capacity was still expected to be breached in all provinces when the epidemic peaks in midAugust, said the minister.
“Currently planned hospital beds in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng are projected to be insufficient. Bed capacity including all currently committed public and private sector beds is expected to be breached in the next four weeks,” he said.
The government is basing its planning on projections from the National Covid Epi Model, which has been recalibrated to reflect hospital admission data, updated estimates of the reproductive number, and a shift in testing priorities, said the minister.
The reproductive number measures how contagious a disease is, and reflects the average number of people who will contract the disease from one infected person.
“We are now at a point where it is our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, close friends and comrades that are infected. This pandemic will cause some of us lifetime scars. It steals from us, from some lives, others jobs, others businesses. It spares no race, no gender or social class,” Mkhize said.
He acknowledged the sacrifices made by frontline healthcare workers, and assured them that SA had sufficient stocks of personal protective equipment such as gowns, masks and gloves despite the supply chain problems in some provinces.
The DA’s health spokesperson Siviwe Gwarube said Covid-19 was decimating a public health system that was already on its knees before the pandemic struck.
The government had failed to build sufficient health system capacity during the country’s hard lockdown, when schools and most businesses were shuttered and all but essential workers were required to stay at home except for essential trips to obtain groceries or medical care, and had not allocated sufficient financial resources to combat the disease, she said.
WE ARE AT A POINT WHERE IT IS OUR FATHERS, MOTHERS, BROTHERS, SISTERS, CLOSE FRIENDS AND COMRADES THAT ARE INFECTED