Eastern Cape fast running out of hospital beds, Discovery Health reveals

The Eastern Cape has already shown the first warning signs of coming close to exceeding capacity of the private healthcare system, according to Discovery Health’s findings amid South Africa’s second wave of infections.

Presenting its data findings on the second wave on Monday, Discovery Health chief executive officer (CEO) Dr Ryan Noach revealed that South Africa’s infection rates were following a similar pattern to Europe’s second wave.

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“South Africa is now clearly in a second wave. The Eastern Cape and Western Cape, in particular, are currently experiencing a surge in new infections with a well-established second wave, and we fully expect the imminent emergence of a second wave in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).

“Across these provinces Discovery’s data classifies a number of hotspot areas where additional precautions should be taken due to significantly elevated rates of active Covid-19 infections,” he said.

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Noach said the proportion of infections from higher risk groups including those older adults over the age of 60 has increased 1.6 times in the Eastern Cape, with a 17% increase in hospitalisation, while the Garden Route was also experiencing shortages in hospital beds, with patients needing to be moved by emergency services to other parts of the country, where there were still sufficient hospital beds available.

He further said that since the year-end matric celebration Rage Festival in Umhlanga and Ballito, KZN, which was identified as a super-spreader event, data indicated that over 80% of attendees tested positive for Covid-19.

“Discovery’s data also shows that the proportion of positive tests in young adults increased by 3.6 times across the country in the first week of December, significantly more than the increases seen across other age categories,” he said.

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Noach added that data suggested that many young adults who attended social events returned home entirely asymptomatic but infected, and probably spread the virus.

“Of importance, the majority of the positive tests in these young adults were received in their hometowns, demonstrating that the virus was transported across the country with a high likelihood of many contacts and potential further spread events.

“In addition, initial data analysis shows that approximately 40% of immediate family members on the same policy also received positive Covid-19 diagnoses within the week to ten days thereafter. This strongly suggests that infections were passed on from young adults returning from post-matric events to their families,” Noach continued to say.

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