R4 million VWSA donation pushes EC lab testing rate up to 3,000 a day

The National Health Laboratory Service in Port Elizabeth can now test up to 3,000 specimens for Covid-19 a day, thanks to a R4m injection by Volkswagen South Africa.

On Tuesday, outgoing VWSA chair Thomas Schaefer announced that the company had used R4m of a R100m in grant funding committed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ) to bolster testing at the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) branch responsible for the majority of Covid-19 testing in the metro.

At the same time, health boss Dr Thobile Mbengashe announced that the provincial government had allocated R190m to ensure all Covid-19 facilities had adequate oxygen.

The announcements were made during an oversight visit conducted by Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane, health MEC Sindiswa Gomba and  sport MEC Fezeka Nkomonye.

The provincial delegation kicked off its visit at the Uitenhage Provincial Hospital, where Mabuyane was stopped in his tracks by disgruntled health-care workers who told him there were no dustbins in some of the rooms and the hospital was without a health and safety committee.

Schaefer, who joked that he had been at the handover in his private capacity after being appointed the global CEO of Skoda Auto, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen group, handed over personal protective equipment (PPE) to the department of health worth R10m.

This will be distributed to staff at the three main Covid-19 hospitals in the metro — Dora Nginza, Livingstone and Uitenhage Provincial — as well as other regional primary care clinics and Covid-19 test centres.

Schaefer said ensuring frontline workers were protected had become a personal passion.

“Our frontline health-care workers are in dire need of the PPE to feel safe and be able to do their work, which is to provide care and save the lives of our people.

“It is our wish that this PPE will bring relief and hope to our health-care workers who have been toiling under difficult circumstances to treat the Covid-19 patients,” he said.

Schaefer said VWSA had assisted the NHLS by performing extensive renovations to turn an open office space into a fully-fledged molecular virology laboratory in the space of 18 days.

The company also analysed and recommended improvements to the NHLS’s testing processes to increase efficiency.

With a full staff complement, these improvements would increase the testing capacity to more than 3,000 a day, more than doubling the present daily testing capacity.

“We need to be able to trace the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic to fight it — the faster we act, the better we can keep it from spreading further.

“That is why it is absolutely crucial for the NHLS to have the capability to analyse tests and deliver results quickly,” Schaefer said.

Mabuyane said VWSA had made if difficult for the provincial government to ask for more as the company had been so proactive in its approach to assist in combating Covid-19.

“I appreciate their focus on talking less and doing more,” he said.

“I am certain the greatest reward we can give VWSA is to use this donation effectively to preserve as many lives as possible during this pandemic.

“We believe this is not a far-fetched reward to pursue as our resolve is lifted by the emerging positive trends in our epidemiological data.”

Mabuyane said there had been a reduction in the number of new cases recorded in the province, with the figure now standing at fewer  than 1,000 a day.

“In the Eastern Cape, we are currently dealing with just over 6,465 active cases now and the majority of these cases are in Nelson Mandela Bay and the Buffalo City metro.

“Our teams are working around the clock attending to these cases.

“The reduction was observed in all districts in the province.

“Buffalo City Metro had a 49.8% reduction in the number of newly reported cases, followed by OR Tambo (41.1%), Sarah Baartman (40%) and Nelson Mandela Bay (35.9%),” he said.

In July, the health department introduced a new testing strategy, focusing testing on hospital patients, their immediate contacts, those showing symptoms and hospital staff.

All community and mobile  testing  sites in the metro were closed.

Asked if this new testing strategy did not influence the reduction in reported cases, health boss Mbengashe said no.

“There was a big outcry that the NHLS was being overrun by tests due to mass screening and testing.

“This was us literally going to the communities and asking them if they’ve got symptoms.

“Our positive rate, our yield, has not changed.

“Our yield is about 20%-23% and this means for every 100 people we test, 23 test positive.

“We’re not missing people who are positive,” he said.

While there was a reduction, Mabuyane cautioned that there was a level of social-distancing fatigue in the metro.

“We have seen people socialising as if there is no pandemic in our midst.

“That is why this metro [Nelson Mandela Bay] is an epicentre of the province.

“We commend the leadership of the metro for quickly setting up multi-stakeholder ward-based command councils in the hot-spot wards, particularly in KwaNobuhle and Motherwell.

“These structures are critical in giving communities the responsibility to stop the spread of the virus and to promote behavioral change in their own settings,” Mabuyane said.

- HeraldLIVE