Medics share experience at the coalface

AS CAPE Town heads into what is likely the peak of Covid-19 infections, health-care workers are telling the public what it’s like inside the packed hospital wards.

This week, Premier Alan Winde said the peak was flatter than originally expected, meaning there would likely be more deaths over a longer period of time, but the demand for hospital beds at its height would be lower than originally projected.

“As a result, it is projected that 5 450 beds will be needed at the ‘peak’ should this scenario hold. This is lower than both the original provisioning scenario from April (6 304), and the previous calibration from May (7800).”

But inside hospitals, both in the province and nationally, health-care workers are feeling the brunt of the influx. Winde said hospitalisations stand at 1845 with 326 in ICU or high care.

Verna Collins and Judith Parenzee, two nurses in Groote Schuur’s Covid19 ICU, described the experience of being inundated with admissions as overwhelming.

“We used to have six beds in here, now we’re sitting with 18 beds in the unit that I’m currently working in. We’ve only had one patient that’s actually left. The turnover is so bad. We’ve been admitting constantly, it just goes on and on,” they wrote online.

“There’s just no staff, so now they ask us to work one of our off days as well. We are emotionally drained. We are full, full, full. I don’t know where all the new patients are going to go.”

Dr Laylah Fayker, who works in emergency medicine at a public hospital in Cape Town, described how a relatively young and previously healthy patient lost his life without access to an ICU bed.

“‘No ICU beds doc’. We had a patient, 42-year-old with Covid. No comorbidities. He came in severely short of breath. We threw everything we could at him, but couldn’t tube him because we had no beds. He died,” she wrote.

“One of the senior medical officers and I really took this one to heart

because we were pushing for a bed for him. She did the rest of the call and when she saw me in the morning she took my hand and she said, ‘There wasn’t a bed.’ We cried.”

Dr Danielle Moulton, who works at Groote Schuur Hospital, described on Facebook what it’s like to work in a Covid-19 ward during Cape Town’s peak infections. “We are faced with so many difficult decisions every day. Who deserves double oxygen therapy and who doesn’t?

“May we keep this patient here to be with her dying husband despite her being well? What do we do if this treatment doesn’t work for this patient since they’ve been rejected from ICU?”

It’s not only Covid-positive patients who face worse odds – even patients who have conditions unrelated to Covid-19 are taking the brunt of the stretched resources nationwide.

Dr Michelle Dandara described her heartbreak at being unable to help a young patient because she couldn’t be admitted to ICU until her test results proved her Covid-19 status.

“What I hate the most about this pandemic is withholding lifesaving surgery because Covid needs to be excluded first,” she wrote. “The sweetest little angel needed surgery for a blocked VP shunt and ICU would only take her if she had a negative swab.

“She died and 30 minutes later her result came back as negative. I’ve been in tears all day.”