The purpose of the national lockdown is not to avoid Covid-19 but to flatten the curve while our health and other systems gear up to deal with it at its inevitable peak.
There is no cure and there is no vaccine so we have little choice but to slow infections until we are in a position to properly roll out screening and testing and to deal with those people who will be hit hardest by it.
The lockdown simply buys us time. That time has to be well spent because the personal cost of the lockdown to many, and to our economy, is steep.
The initial goal was to prepare our existing institutions for the disease, to train health personnel, to set up isolation and quarantine sites, and to build field hospitals for an influx of cases that would require specialist ICU and respiratory care.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent tour of Gauteng facilities impressed him.
The field hospital set up at the Nasrec expo centre is said to be remarkable. It already has excellent isolation and quarantining capacity and — once completed — is expected to have about 250 ICU and hospital beds.
Some existing hospitals are being completely cleared for Covid-19 patients while others have dedicated separate wards to deal with those with the disease. Screening and testing was being rolled out and most who needed it had personal protective equipment (PPE).
In the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, Dr John Black, head of the infectious diseases and HIV unit at Livingstone Hospital, presented challenges including shortage of staff and an urgent need for PPE.
Health MEC Sindiswa Gomba reportedly tried to explain away her failure to appoint a permanent head of health in the badly hit Nelson Mandela Bay area by intimating she was waiting for ANC SG Ace Magashule to “approve a name”.
Why the MEC thinks she can fob off her constitutional obligations on a man who holds no state office was never explained.
Health minister Zweli Mkhize has since bolstered the Bay with a team of experts to assist it in the fight against the disease.
He should consider deploying them in other areas of the province where provincial support has been absent. We have covered a number of protests in hospitals where staff say they have not been provided with PPE and felt ill-equipped to deal with what was coming their way.
If Mkhize does not step in, the time we bought with the lockdown will have been wasted for the Eastern Cape at least.
Rest of Eastern Cape also needs Mkhize’s big guns
Image: SOWETANLIVE
The purpose of the national lockdown is not to avoid Covid-19 but to flatten the curve while our health and other systems gear up to deal with it at its inevitable peak.
There is no cure and there is no vaccine so we have little choice but to slow infections until we are in a position to properly roll out screening and testing and to deal with those people who will be hit hardest by it.
The lockdown simply buys us time. That time has to be well spent because the personal cost of the lockdown to many, and to our economy, is steep.
The initial goal was to prepare our existing institutions for the disease, to train health personnel, to set up isolation and quarantine sites, and to build field hospitals for an influx of cases that would require specialist ICU and respiratory care.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent tour of Gauteng facilities impressed him.
The field hospital set up at the Nasrec expo centre is said to be remarkable. It already has excellent isolation and quarantining capacity and — once completed — is expected to have about 250 ICU and hospital beds.
Some existing hospitals are being completely cleared for Covid-19 patients while others have dedicated separate wards to deal with those with the disease. Screening and testing was being rolled out and most who needed it had personal protective equipment (PPE).
In the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, Dr John Black, head of the infectious diseases and HIV unit at Livingstone Hospital, presented challenges including shortage of staff and an urgent need for PPE.
Health MEC Sindiswa Gomba reportedly tried to explain away her failure to appoint a permanent head of health in the badly hit Nelson Mandela Bay area by intimating she was waiting for ANC SG Ace Magashule to “approve a name”.
Why the MEC thinks she can fob off her constitutional obligations on a man who holds no state office was never explained.
Health minister Zweli Mkhize has since bolstered the Bay with a team of experts to assist it in the fight against the disease.
He should consider deploying them in other areas of the province where provincial support has been absent. We have covered a number of protests in hospitals where staff say they have not been provided with PPE and felt ill-equipped to deal with what was coming their way.
If Mkhize does not step in, the time we bought with the lockdown will have been wasted for the Eastern Cape at least.
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