Bhisho bolsters medical capacity as SA death toll rises

SA’s coronavirus death toll now stands at seven, but the Eastern Cape government is determined to stop the spread through effective monitoring and provision strategies.

Health minister Zweli Mkhize said on Friday there were 1,505 cases of Covid-19 recorded across the country, an increase of 43 from Thursday night.

The two new recorded deaths were an 80-year-old man and an 81-year-old woman in KwaZulu-Natal.

He said there were two more cases that were under investigation and, if confirmed, this would take the country’s official Covid-19 death toll to nine.

On Friday night, Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane confirmed there were now 17 confirmed coronavirus cases in the Eastern Cape.

The breakdown is as follows: East London (4), Aberdeen (1), Komani (1), Xhora (1), St Francis Bay (1), Uitenhage (1), Paterson (1) and Port Elizabeth (7). 

Mkhize said there was a question over whether it was “worth the effort” to test people when more than 50,000 tests had revealed a relatively small 1,500 cases.

“It is worth the effort even if we test several million people but only find a couple of thousand cases ... because the devastation of a Covid-19 outbreak that is unmanaged and uncontrolled is far worse than the cost of testing many people.”

That is also the belief of Mabuyane, who announced on Friday that the provincial government had implemented a comprehensive data managing system to track where people who tested positive for Covid-19 were, where water was delivered  and how many beds and ventilators hospitals needed.

Mabuyane said the latest infections in the province were a doctor and a nurse at a Port Elizabeth hospital. The doctor had recently travelled to Asia.

But in a bid to bolster the province’s fight against the virus, the provincial government would be procuring small medical facilities in King William’s Town from a private medical company, which “we are activating”.

“We are reviving these hospitals that were no longer in use. Public works is fixing and renovating them. We’re going to need the hospitals.

The government would also add 1,600 beds to hospitals across the province.

The Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council (ECSECC) has been mandated by Mabuyane to oversee the data-managing system.

At a media briefing in East London on Friday, ECSECC project management office specialist Dr Sybert Liebenberg said: “We take their [patients] data and we can tell where they are and based on that, we analyse it to assist the government and create management data around them.

“Once we know where a person is, we check, among a whole range of other issues, if there is a hospital near them. This helps us understand whether [the virus] can move, so we can plan.”

Meanwhile, the government has admitted it is struggling to procure equipment to protect the medical practitioners who are on the front line of the fight against the coronavirus.

Deputy health minister Joe Phaahla made this admission on Friday, saying the biggest producer of this equipment was China, which was itself in need of it.

Moreover, with the coronavirus having spread mostly in Europe and the US, which are also importing from China, competition was making things more difficult.

The government was doing everything in its power to ensure all health workers  were protected, he said.

Mabuyane also said the provincial government was ramping up efforts to secure protective gear.

In the public interest, none of our coronavirus news coverage will be placed behind our paywall and will be available free for all to read. If you would like to support our mission of delivering award-winning, independent local news, please consider taking out a subscription by clicking here.