A task team from the Eastern Cape department of health will reveal today how many babies died at the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital in Mthatha.

It was reported this weekend that more than 100 premature and low-birth-weight babies have died in the institution's neo-natal intensive care unit since January.

Yesterday, Eastern Cape health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the number of infants who died had yet to be confirmed, but reports he received varied between 98 and more than 100 deaths.

This follows last week's shock deaths of six premature babies in the neo-natal unit of the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital from severe diarrhoea, probably caused by the killer klebsiella bacteria.

The Times reported yesterday that preliminary laboratory tests confirmed that the bottles used to feed the babies tested positive for the bacteria.

Also last week, 11 babies were confirmed to have died at the Natalspruit Hospital in Katlehong, east of Johannesburg - 10 babies were lost on May 11 and another on May 12.

Yesterday, a senior official in the Eastern Cape health department told The Times that when he visited Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital over the weekend, the ventilators in the neo-natal intensive care unit were switched off because there had been an oxygen leak in the ward. Leaking oxygen poses a severe fire risk.

It was not yet clear whether the hospital's lack of ventilators to treat the underdeveloped infants with immature lungs caused some of the babies to die.

"The ventilators have not been working. The problem is that they are mounted on the walls and could not be moved and there was an oxygen leak and the entire neo-natal unit now has to operate without ventilators," he said.

"I established this when I visited there. There were too many ventilators there, but they had to be shut down once they detected the leak."

Kupelo said a task team consisting of three senior health officials - a senior midwife, a chief director of hospital services and a director of district hospitals - was assembled to conduct a thorough probe into what happened.

"What we do know is that some of the babies who died were sick and exposed to HIV as their mothers were not treated with anti-retrovirals to prevent transmission from mother to child," he said.

"Many weighed less than 700g. Others died from pneumonia."

Kupelo said Nelson Mandela Academic was a referral hospital and some of the babies died while being transferred there from district and rural hospitals around the former Transkei.

These include the St Barnabas Hospital in Libode, Port St John's Community Health Centre, St Elizabeth's Hospital in Lusikisiki, St Patrick's Hospital in Bizana, Sipethu Hospital near Tabankulu, and Greenville Hospital in the far east of the province near the KwaZulu-Natal border.

Kupelo said Eastern Cape health MEC Pumullo Masualle will hold a media briefing this morning at which the task team's interim findings will be revealed.

Yesterday, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi apologised to the country for the deaths of the 17 babies at the Natalspruit and Charlotte Maxeke hospitals.

"I want to apologise publicly to the country as a whole because of this tragedy," he said.

Motsoaledi said infection control and overcrowding played a role in the deaths of the babies at the Gauteng hospitals.

"There was definitely a lapse in infection control," he said.

He also said HIV and Aids contributed to the situation, saying that though he was "not proposing that the babies who died [were HIV positive], but it's part of the equation". - Additional reporting by Judy Lelliott and Sapa