There is no doubt that SA’s second wave of Covid-19 infections is going to be worse than the first. You only have to glance at the exponential growth in active infections in the worst affected provinces over the last three weeks to realise that.
But health minister Zweli Mkhize’s announcement on Wednesday evening confirming the existence of a second wave came too late. By the middle of last week, all the key 14-day rolling averages were in positive territory, with active infections the last metric to join the club. That was the time to push the panic button and attempt to shock people into changing their behaviour.
The severity of what’s about to hit us was accentuated by the emergence of two disturbing documents over the last 48 hours. One said the masks being issued to thousands of health workers have failed safety tests; the other drew attention to the desperate plight of the health workers who have been in the fight of their lives for the best part of the year.
Experts in the Lung Institute at the University of Cape Town said disruption of the global supply chain combined with high demand, inequitable distribution, hoarding, misuse, price gouging and export blocking meant N95 masks — which are excellent and highly regulated — are in short supply.
Replacement KN95 masks, mainly from China, have filled the gap but tests showed most of them don’t fit people’s faces, leading to leaks, and half of them let virus particles through even when they do fit properly.
This news should be seen in the context of a Gift of the Givers statement, which conveyed the despair of health workers in the Eastern Cape. “We are in deep trouble, the virus is everywhere, the hospital is full, not only the Covid-19 beds, the whole hospital,” they said.
“We urgently need PPEs, sanitiser, pulse oximeters, non-contact thermometers and scrubs. Where are the extra staff we were promised, we need them desperately right now, we are exhausted, we can’t cope, staff are on leave or in quarantine, with no replacements. Many have tested positive, some for a second time now with more symptoms than before.”
Gift of the Givers head Imtiaz Sooliman said he had been struck by “the resilience, the inner strength, the commitment and the desire to serve” among health workers.
But then came the rub: “Gift of the Givers logistics division has been hard at work transporting supplies from Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg to our Eastern Cape teams hard at work urgently delivering KN95 and three-ply surgical masks ...”
These are the same masks that UCT has pronounced unsafe and substandard (surgical masks were included in its tests, and while falling short of N95 masks, some of them outperformed the KN95 models).
To be sure, any mask is better than none but it is deeply worrying that health authorities have not been able to sort out their supply chains in the 40 weeks since SA’s first confirmed case of Covid-19.
On top of the litany of revelations about corruption in personal protective equipment procurement, we are asking health workers to swallow another particularly bitter — and possibly fatal — pill by failing to ensure the best possible protection for them.
Alongside its pledge on Thursday to fast-track regulatory approval for Covid-19 vaccines, the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority must pay close attention to the UCT recommendations about a new testing regime for masks.
They include simple steps such as setting up a website indicating which KN95 masks have been tested and what the results were. This would guide the purchasing decisions of health authorities and ensure they equip their staff with masks that work.
It’s difficult to imagine any valid objection to this, and it could be done within a day or two. Winning the war against Covid-19 will involve hundreds of similar small, agile steps as we endure the four or five months until vaccine rollout begins.
No delay — such as the one we have just witnessed in confirming a second wave of infections — can be justified or excused.
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