Durban - Hospitals are starting to see a decrease in the number of Covid-19 patients admitted to public and private facilities, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday night.
He was addressing South Africans on the pandemic, and the arrival of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines from India.
“In fact, the average rate of new infections has been steadily coming down over the last three weeks, indicating that we have now passed the peak of the second wave. In the past seven days, the daily average of new infections was around 5 500, compared to just over 10 000 infections in the previous seven days. In other words, the average number of daily new infections has come down to almost half of what it was.
“At the peak of the second wave, we recorded over 2 300 hospital admissions in a day. This had fallen to 295 hospital admissions by Friday (January 29).”
Ntokozo Maphisa, the KZN spokesperson for the Department of Health, said that while public hospitals had taken strain since the start of the pandemic, they did not run out of beds.
He said that if needed, patients could be transferred to other districts but it had not come to that.
Maphisa said statistics released on Friday indicated that out of 1 012 beds at government hospitals in eThekwini, only 396 were occupied, and of the total 30 ICU beds, 22 were occupied.
Dr Charl Van Loggerenberg, the general manager for emergency medicine at Life Healthcare, which operates hospitals like Entabeni, Westville and Mount Edgecombe, said there was a decrease across all units in the province.
“Total Covid-19 positive patients has declined from 550 to 324 (statistics as at January 29). We have Covid-19 beds available across all units,” he said
Michelle Naidoo, the group marketing manager at Lenmed, which operates Shifa and eThekwini, said there had been strong and sustained decline in Covid-19 admissions at Lenmed hospitals over the past few week.
“This, coupled with the national statistics, confirms that the country is over the second wave peak. Over the past few months, we have experienced the detrimental effect delaying treatment has had on our community members. As we all are aware, the sooner we are able to treat any condition, the better the outcome.
“We appeal to our communities to not wait in seeking medical care. The safety of our patients, employees, doctors and community members remains our collective priority and responsibility.”
Naidoo said Lenmed was excited that the first batch of the Covid-19 vaccines had arrived in the country on Monday.
“This batch will serve to immunise our deserving health-care workers. The Lenmed team will endeavour to keep our communities up to date with information pertaining to the vaccine as and when we receive it.”
Netcare, which owns hospitals like Parklands, St Augustine’s and uMhlanga, did not respond at the time of publication.
The Post