{"id":403603,"date":"2021-06-26T07:29:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T05:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=403603"},"modified":"2021-06-26T07:33:18","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T05:33:18","slug":"gauteng-hospitals-overwhelmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/trending\/403603-gauteng-hospitals-overwhelmed.html","title":{"rendered":"Gauteng hospitals overwhelmed by third wave"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hospital capacity in South Africa\u2019s industrial hub of Gauteng is at risk of being breached by\u00a0surging<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Covid-19 cases within days.<\/p>\n

The densely populated province, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, accounts for the bulk of the country\u2019s infections during the ongoing third wave, and health resources are already stretched.<\/p>\n

Weekly\u00a0hospital admissions<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0are almost as high as they were during the height of the first wave in July, and the total number of cases is forecast to be twice as large as during the first two waves.<\/p>\n

Yet at current staffing levels, only about 100 of about 1,000 extra beds that have been specially equipped for Covid-19 in Gauteng are able to be used, according to Shabir Madhi, a professor of vaccinology at Johannesburg\u2019s University of the Witwatersrand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems the province forgot to budget or employ staff to manage those facilities,\u201d Madhi said. \u201cIt needs to happen by this weekend or else we are going to be in deep trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

The situation has been exacerbated by the\u00a0closure<\/span>\u00a0of one of the province\u2019s biggest hospitals. The Charlotte Maxeke facility in Johannesburg was shut down in April after a fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a terrible delay in reopening the hospital, which is completely unacceptable,\u201d Gauteng Premier David Makhura said in a presentation Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny more delays will cause severe health risks to the population of the province.\u201d In the meantime, \u201cwe continue to expand human resources and bed capacity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa this week acknowledged that more beds and medical workers are needed even after he deployed military personnel in the province on Monday to help healthcare workers conduct mass-screening and testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are opening up as many hospital beds as they possibly can,\u201d Ramaphosa said on Tuesday at a media briefing.<\/p>\n

Complacency in measures such as wearing masks and avoiding large gatherings prompted the president to warn that further restrictions may be implemented.<\/p>\n

\u201cGauteng already has a huge problem,\u201d said Angelique Coetzee, chairwoman of the South African Medical Association. \u201cAs a doctor, just phone any hospital to say you have a Covid-19 patient that needs a bed and you won\u2019t find one.”<\/p>\n

“Even if the government found another 2,000 beds, there are no personnel to staff them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The country initially imposed strict lockdown measures, partly helping South Africa get through its first two waves of the coronavirus without major hospitals having to turn people away.<\/p>\n

But a slow vaccination rollout means only about 4% of the national population has\u00a0had any shots<\/a><\/strong>, just as the arrival of mid-winter leads more people to gather indoors. Mask wearing and restrictions on gatherings remain law but are rarely enforced.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s biggest private hospitals, Mediclinic International Plc, Netcare Ltd. and Life\u00a0Healthcare<\/span>\u00a0Group Holdings Ltd., have joined calls for more vigilance and self-regulation in communities as both patient numbers and the severity of their conditions increase.<\/p>\n

Still, Madhi believes further lockdown measures would be too late.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are already close to a peak in the infection rate,\u201d he said. \u201cWe expect the peak in hospitalizations to come in three to four weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coetzee also said she is seeing reinfections, and there isn\u2019t enough evidence yet to show that a previous case of Covid-19 protects a patient against acute disease.<\/p>\n

Yet the level of fatalities may prove to be lower. Medical staff know more about how to treat the disease, and equipment such as ventilators are being moved more quickly to areas under the most pressure.<\/p>\n

Richard Friedland, Netcare\u2019s chief executive officer, said his hospital has done everything possible to prepare for the increase in cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have substantially increased our Covid-19 bed capacity, contracted more resident medical officers and clinical associates and made every effort to ensure that we have adequate supplies of oxygen, the appropriate medication, as well as personal protective equipment to last us through this surge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Now read: Deadlier coronavirus variant ravaging Gauteng<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hospital capacity in South Africa\u2019s industrial hub of Gauteng is at risk of being breached by\u00a0surging\u00a0Covid-19 cases within days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":402557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40380],"tags":[64364,65341,1952,25669,9365,64219,70417,66823,36630,64111],"class_list":["post-403603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-angelique-coetzee","tag-covid-19-coronavirus","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-david-makhura","tag-gauteng","tag-hospitals","tag-life-healthcare","tag-mediclinic","tag-netcare","tag-shabir-madhi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":403605,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403603\/revisions\/403605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}