Mineworkers’ ICU beds already taken
• Warning of more infections, deaths
SA’s mines are finding that prearranged hospital beds earmarked for mineworkers infected with Covid-19 have already been allocated, as the country’s health system struggles with increased numbers.
SA’s mines are finding that prearranged hospital beds earmarked for mineworkers infected with Covid-19 have already been allocated as the country’s health system struggles with increased numbers.
So far, nearly 296,000 mineworkers have returned to their jobs out of more than 420,000 when the industry is at full capacity.
With 28 fatalities out of 3,519 positive tests, the mining industry mortality rate was half the national rate of 1.6%, said Thuthula Balfour, head of health at the Minerals Council SA. Two weeks ago, the number of the mining industry’s Covid-19 fatalities was six.
She said that the epidemic in the mining provinces of Gauteng, North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga was less mature on average than in a province such as the Western Cape, but warned that the number of people testing positive and dying in the mining sector was likely to rise over time.
“Our mortality rate goes hand-in-hand with the maturity of the epidemic,” Balfour said.
But for mining companies, a major concern is that the beds they booked in nearby hospitals for ill mineworkers were filled with people from local communities, leaving companies to compete with everyone else for high-level medical care.
Mining companies, which once had their own hospitals, have mostly sold these assets and have agreements with nearby state and private hospitals instead as they found ways to cut costs.
As part of their early strategy to handle the pandemic, companies made arrangements with hospitals to secure future bed space.
“Hospitals are filling up. Even where companies had made arrangements, you find when your person needs an ICU bed, it’s not there,” Balfour said.
“Overall, the system is getting quite constrained in the country. We, as the mining sector and the government, need to look at increasing capacity for the treatment of people.”
SA has the 14th-largest number of cases of Covid-19 in the world, with more than 215,000 infections. Business Day reported on Tuesday that Gauteng was experiencing a rapid surge in infections. Its Covid-19 hospital admissions have more than tripled in the past two weeks, rising from 956 on June 24 to 3,167 on July 8. The figures include patients admitted to public and private hospitals.
Health minister Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday that bed capacity in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape, one of the major sources of labour for mines, would be breached in the next four weeks.
The mining sector screens about 296,000 people every day. This entails taking their temperature and asking a set list of questions to determine if anyone is potentially infected. Those showing any indication or potential for having the virus are then tested. So far, the industry has tested 33,400 people. It has reported 1,963 recoveries out of the 3,519 who tested positive.
The industry expects the return of 12,500 skilled mineworkers based in neighbouring countries to take about 20 weeks, with bottlenecks at the border posts and logistics of moving hundreds of people to mines and into quarantine taking longer than first thought.