Is Gauteng ready for virus surge?

PORTER: SCENES AT STEVE BIKO ACADEMIC HOSPITAL MAKE HIM ‘SCARED TO COME TO WORK’ Province has surpassed Western Cape with number of Covid-19 infections.

Scenes at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria, which a staff member said ‘smells of death, pain and suffering’ paints a bleak picture of the Covid-19 situation in Gauteng, which has surpassed Western Cape with number of infections.

The Steve Biko Academic hospital in Pretoria is in the thick of the Covid-19 onslaught, with staff members detailing a chaotic situation and a hanging “smell of death” that has left a staff member terrified.

Pictures posted on social media have painted a grim scenario at the facility, with patients lined up on beds, with gas cylinders, at the hospital’s roofed entrance area and outside makeshift Covid-19 ward tents.

“Mortuary trolleys are busy, all we do now is load and push out bodies. The place of work smells of death, pain and suffering,” said the staff member, who cannot be named.

He said Friday was the worst and that during the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, while it was concerning but manageable, it was now out of control.

“We have people coming in with ambulances, private vehicles and on foot. Most of them are on their last breath. I am scared to come to work … it is really bad,” said the staff member.

Gauteng has surpassed the Western Cape with the number of Covid-19 infections, with the total number of Covid cases in Gauteng at 328 925 (with 276 998 recoveries) and 6 142 deaths by Sunday.

A total of 4 033 people are currently hospitalised in the public and private facilities.

The Gauteng department of health yesterday confirmed the authenticity of the photographs and video material documenting the situation at the Steve Biko academic hospital.

Jack Bloem, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on health in Gauteng, said it was tragic that this has had to be done in the face of rising Covid-19 cases.

“I hope that better alternatives are explored. It’s a pity 300 new beds for Covid-19 patients were built at the Jubilee Hospital [Hammanskraal] when the greater need is in the centre of Tshwane. I am concerned that we may not have enough staff and oxygen for patients. The epidemic may only peak in Gauteng in February or early March,” he said.

According to the department, the facility has experienced a sharp increase in the number of Covid-19 patients since December, with the increased number of patients sicker and requiring critical care, with some arriving in groups and putting serious pressure on the facility.

“Some of the patients the hospital is receiving are coming from private facilities because of lack of space, while others are self-referred from other provinces such as North West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo,” the department said in a statement.

Early last year, the Gauteng department of health converted Tshwane District Hospital into a dedicated Covid-19 treating facility in partnership with Steve Biko Academic hospital, transforming the two hospitals into complex.

The department said these efforts were done in order to increase Covid-19 designated beds within the complex but lamented that the complex was now under pressure, particularly with regards to patients that require specialist immediate attention.

“The hospital’s emergency unit entrance has an area that has a roof, designed to handle disasters of especially patients in the emergency category Priority 3, of which patients whose images are in the social media fall into,” the department’s spokesperson Kwara Kekana said in a statement yesterday.

The department has an ambulance diversion system, where ambulances get information on what services are under pressure in any of the hospitals.

“All hospitals are inundated. Covid-19 patients require immediate care. The hospital resolved that there will be no diversion of ambulance to other facilities, and no turning away of any patient as long as there is a space that a patient can be attended to fully so as to ensure more people are catered to,” the department said.

The facility is putting up two additional tents to accommodate this increase in number of patients coming to the facility as one of the interventions to treat the rising number of Covid-19 patients.

Gauteng premier David Makhura’s spokesperson, Vuyo Mhaga, said Gauteng was a “compact” province and home to every fourth person in the country.

“We did expect the numbers, especially when people come back from holidays. At the moment we have enough oxygen, we are continuing to recruit and we have increased hospital beds by adding an additional 2 200,” he said.

In July, the Nasrec Covid-19 field hospital was said be in need of oxygen and the plan was to have 1 500 beds available at the facility, including 400 with piped oxygen and 120 with oxygen concentrators.

Mhaga said the facility would be used to hospitalise people under Covid-19 assessment.

The place of work smells of death