Western Cape seeing rise in hospital admissions again – Winde

Western Cape Premier Alan Winde has appealed to people in the province to continue following Covid-19 regulations after noting an increase in hospital admissions over the last two days.

“It is comforting for me to say that it looks like we are reaching our peak but when I look at the numbers in the last two days they have started to go up in our hospitals again.

“We had reached nearly 3,500 hospital beds in our system round about the end of last year and the beginning of this year and then we slowly started coming down and I thought we were going to break under 3,000.

“We just came under 3,000 and now we have gone up to 3,200 again. There is a real warning here to everyone in this province. We all know what to do, we must keep doing it,” said Winde.

The premier was speaking during his visit to Stellenbosch Hospital on Monday as part of a series of hospital visits he and Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo have undertaken.

As of Sunday evening, the Western Cape had 46 411 active cases. In a briefing last Tuesday, the province said that it had 3 290 Covid-19 patients in its private and public hospitals.

Winde warned that the province needed to stay vigilant especially as people started making their way back home from the festive season.

“People are going to start going back to work now, people are coming home from different parts of our country, please make sure that we keep the social distance, stay away from crowds make sure that we keep flattening this curve.

“It is the right and fair thing to do to these amazing people who are on the frontline every single day,” he said.

“If we want to get back to work and we want to get things going again we all still have to be committed to making sure that we flatten this curve,” he added.

Meanwhile, Stellenbosch Hospital medical manager, Dr Richard Davids, said they had done more tests in the past month than they had conducted in the first wave.

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