Hospitals ‘under strain’

Health workers are still under strain despite President Cyril Ramaphosa announcing adjusted Level 3
lockdown restrictions last week.

Johannesburg-based Dr Leon Odendaal told The Citizen hospitals were still under severe strain, mainly due to staff shortages.

“The death rate is also increasing but the lockdown effects will only be clear later,” he said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a nurse working at a Johannesburg hospital in the Covid-19 intensive care unit said: “When the president announced the Level 3 lockdown and spoke about the healthcare workers, I started to cry.

“I do not know what we are going to do. I am so tired. Another nurse working with us died last night.”

She said they have not yet seen the difference under adjusted Level 3. “It will probably be another two or three weeks
before I can really see a difference.”

The nurse said she recently worked in the Covid-19 ICU for three out of four nights.

“The skin under my breasts has peeled off from the friction of the sweat of wearing personal protective equipment for hours on end.”

She said before the pandemic, they worked shifts – three days on and days off.

“Now, we start off with normal shifts and then it gets moved around like crazy. I worked two of my normal shifts last month from the 16 shifts on a normal month.

“They increased our patients from four to six to try to get staff to help cover but we literally can no longer work. They have called in all the staff on leave and we are still short-staffed.”

She said they were not concerned if more waves of infections were predicted. “I cannot think so far ahead in the future, I just have to look at today; at the moment. We are in survival mode.”

Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng spokesman for health Jack Bloom said if SA did not secure and vaccinate people, the third wave would hit the country in winter.

“The current second wave has not peaked yet. Gauteng’s infections will probably peak in February,” Bloom said.

The problem was that if people were not vaccinated, a third wave was inevitable.

“Winter already puts extra pressure on the health system.”

Bloom added that the infection rates in the Eastern Cape were already coming down and predicted the Western Cape’s infections would peak at the end of the month before falling again.

“We need to get serious about the vaccine roll-out because if we don’t have a vaccine by winter, we will see a resurgence in infections,” Bloom said.

Daniel Silke, a political and economic analyst, said people were frustrated by the delayed response to the vaccine.

“A delay in the vaccine can have a negative effect on Ramaphosa and the government will be blamed for not bring in a vaccine in time.”

Silke said although SA was seeing some movement, it was under great pressure.

“It is still too slow in terms of implementing a proper vaccine roll-out.”

– marizkac@citizen.co.za

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