Race to ready field hospitals for surge of Covid-19 infections

HEALTH Minister Zweli Mkhize says the department has plans to construct 17 field hospitals to deal with Covid-19 cases.

Six are already operational, eight are under construction and three are awaiting the awarding of tenders.

Mkhize revealed this in a written response to a Parliamentary question from DA MP Siviwe Gwarube, who asked about the number of field hospitals that had been built in each province since March.

“The construction of the field hospitals is at different levels of completion, from site handover to the completion of the construction of the hospital, including utilisation of the hospital,” he said.

Mkhize indicated that most of the facilities were the modification of the space in existing hospitals.

The minister’s response shows that when all the field hospitals are complete, they will provide a total of 3 638 beds, including 60 high care beds, in six provinces.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the field hospital in Pietermaritzburg is already operational. The Ngwelezane, General Justice Gizenga Mapanza and Clairwood field hospitals are still under construction.

Details on the field hospitals came as Mkhize told members of Parliament this week that the long-feared Covid-19 surge had arrived in South Africa, and warned that it would see Gauteng and the Eastern Cape run out of hospital beds to accommodate patients within four weeks.

Gauteng has become the epicentre of Covid-19 in the country, with more confirmed cases than the Western Cape, according to statistics released by Mkhize.

“We have now reached the surge… the storm we have consistently warned South Africa about has now arrived,” Mkhize told a sitting of the National Assembly.

The minister added that with confirmed Covid-19 cases at 224 665 and deaths at 3 602 as at July 8, the pandemic was touching the lives of all South Africans.

“We are now at a point where it’s our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, close friends and comrades who are infected,” he said.

“This pandemic that is attacking us globally will cause some of us lifetime scars. It steals from us – from some it steals lives, others jobs, others businesses. It spares no race, no gender or social class.”

Mkhize said his department had developed and was implementing a surge strategy in anticipation of the peak.

“This will ensure that the capacity increases for Covid-19 while at the same time we continue to deliver other health services to health-care users.”