Gautengers! Put yourselves on voluntary level 5 lockdown, urge experts

Health experts have called on Gauteng residents to put themselves voluntarily into lockdown level five, warning that the peak of the second wave was still to come.

Experts also called on government to introduce online learning until there’s a clear downward trend beyond the peak.

UKZN’s Prof Mosa Moshabela said: “To reduce infections, I think people who can, should just stay home and work from home. Just take yourself into level five lockdown.”

Moshabela said Gauteng is by all intents and purposes in the middle of its surge. Now it is a question of how long it will take for it to peak.

“So far, Gauteng seems to be doing the right things in terms of ensuring the expansion of beds and oxygen capacity, but they really need to protect their health care workers,” he said.

“KwaZulu-Natal suffered greatly because health care workers got infected, and they are not an easy resource to replace. So by all means, protect the health care workers.”

He said that Gauteng is allowing its health care workers to be vocal about challenges on the ground, which is extremely important.

“The situation of health care workers in the Western Cape improved immensely immediately after they were allowed to be vocal about their realities, even when they differed with their provincial government. This is one way of improving communication between health care workers and their provincial governments,” Moshabela said.

With regards to schools, Moshabela said: “This issue of schools is sensitive, in that choosing public health over schooling is a tough choice. However, it is best to protect the learners and their family members.

“Gauteng, unlike rural provinces, should have the capacity for online schooling on a greater scale. I understand that this may not be possible for a few schools, but a catch up programme is always possible with schooling,” he said.

He further advised that it is not too late for Gauteng to explore the possibility of more field hospitals.

“KZN had to use at least four field hospital facilities. I think there should be one or two on standby, or the province should have a good system to move patients between hospitals across the province, both public and private.”

This week Gauteng had recorded more than 17,500 new Covid-19 cases and 436 deaths.

Last week, experts called on Gauteng to be placed on level four for 21 days.

Independent health practitioner Dr Shakira Choonara said not just Gauteng, but the entire country should have procured the vaccine by now to prepare for the surge.

“If somehow the country can speed up the rollout of the vaccine, this would save lives. This would be option one. We could try to prepare our health services as well, but this is going to take time and be more costly,” Choonara said.

“Ultimately it’s also up to each of us to limit social interaction and reduce in-person contact as much as possible.”

She said government also needed to urgently address long queues at Sassa.

“It is unacceptable to have paper-based systems during a pandemic where we should be reducing in-person contact. More concerning is that vulnerable populations are even more at risk,” she said.

Prof Alex van den Heever of the Wits School of Governance, said the number of Covid-19 infections in the second wave is higher than during the first surge last year.

Van den Heever said Gauteng’s peak could be significantly higher than it was in the first wave, and that would overwhelm the province’s hospitals.

He said government reduced the size of the workforce at a time when the country needed a lot of additional nurses and doctors.

SA Medical Association board member Dr Akhtar Hussain criticised the provincial health department, saying it does not seem to be prepared, despite a warning as far back as September.

Hussain said the crisis had always been there and they warned the department about poor infrastructure at various hospitals, which included Steve Biko.

“Though we didn’t know that Covid-19 would come, we were already questioning the infrastructure decades before the pandemic,” Hussain said.

This week, DA MPL Jack Bloom said 983 nurses at Gauteng public hospitals who completed their community service at the end of last year have not been appointed, as promised, to permanent posts this year because of budget cuts.

“I am appalled that these nurses are not being employed immediately, as they are desperately needed to treat the surge of Covid-19 patients that are overwhelming our hospitals,” Bloom said.

Gauteng premier David Makhura said earlier this week the fatality rate in the province was cause for concern.

“When we do a comparison per week, we see the number of people succumbing to Covid-19 is increasing significantly,” he said.

The premier said the province would avail an additional 525 beds to help crowded health facilities. Disturbing images of packed hospitals have emerged on social media, including Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria.

Makhura said the situation in hospitals was a concern, but they were not yet packed to capacity.

He announced the province would use the Nasrec facility to accommodate “patients under investigation” who filled up many hospital beds in both the public and private sectors.

“We are looking at Nasrec in a different way. We were under pressure after the peak of the first wave from other parties that Nasrec should be closed. It was a necessary risk and we said we would not close Nasrec because the behaviour of the pandemic may change. Instead we decided to downscale the number of beds from 1,000 critical care beds to 500 and we kept quarantine beds at 500.

“We are upscaling Nasrec again and will have another 1,000 beds for critical care and another 500 to help us with patients under investigation. This is being coordinated by clinicians at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital,” he said.