The big three: how Covid-19 is playing out in SA’s main economic hubs

The country’s three most economically active provinces are under the spotlight as a third wave of Covid-19 engulfs the country.

So far it appears “the big three” hubs of Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are on somewhat different journeys with infections, but could end up in the same place.

Though it is not the hardest hit in numbers, KwaZulu-Natal is showing the most marked increase (88%), while Gauteng is carrying the load of new infections nationally (64%).

The Western Cape, like KZN, is not officially in a third wave, but is hot on the heels of Gauteng, which has officially been in it for some weeks.

By Thursday last week, Gauteng was hovering just below 26,000 new infections.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a further 15,602 were cumulatively added.

Biostatistician Lise Jamieson, a senior researcher at the Wits Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office in Johannesburg, told Sunday Times Daily that last week revealed some worrying statistics.

She said of KwaZulu-Natal’s 88% increase, “although the incidence is low in some districts, the trend is still worrying”.

Daily cases “had increased substantially throughout the country, with certain provinces hit harder with high increases compared to seven days prior”.

Gauteng had a 58% overall increase in daily cases last week, while the Western Cape had 49%.

Also, said Jamieson, daily hospital admissions had increased substantially in five provinces, with some nearing the peak numbers of the second wave. 

It was announced on Thursday that SA as a whole had officially entered the third wave.

This, as defined by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), means “the new wave seven-day moving average is 30% of the peak incidence of the previous wave”.

According to the Gauteng department of health, subdistricts in Tshwane and Johannesburg are carrying most of the load in the hard-hit province.

Gauteng health spokesperson Kwara Kekana urged citizens to curb the rise of new infections by adhering to safety protocols.

For pulmonologist Dr Frans Skosana, who works at Johannesburg’s Olivedale Hospital, it is not just statistics, but the lived reality of feeling anxious for sickly patients.

Last week he tweeted: “A colleague told me about a patient who couldn’t get an ICU bed, manually ventilated in the emergency department until everyone was tired of using their hands to pump air into his lungs. This is a sad story which ended badly. We need ICU beds and critical skills.”

In the Western Cape, health head Dr Keith Cloete said the province had breached the 1,000 mark of Covid-19 patients who had been admitted to hospital.

On Sunday the province carried the second-highest load (9%) of new cases after Gauteng.

He said there were more than 430 diagnoses each day, oxygen use was increasing daily and five or six people were dying each day in the province from the virus.

Nationally, SA’s biggest medical aid, Discovery Health, noted that the number of members in hospital with Covid-19 had gone up nearly five times, from May 10 to June 10, from 391 to 1,855.

Daily new Covid-19 admissions had increased from 89 new cases daily on May 7 to 222 by June 4, said Discovery chief commercial officer Dr Ronald Whelan.​