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Health experts have criticized the government’s response to the second wave of Covid-19 in South Africa, saying officials were warned about the poor state of hospitals in the country but ended up not doing enough to improve the situation.
Now South Africa is finding hospitals approaching capacity amid record increases in Covid infections, while healthcare workers suffer the brunt of the second wave: exhausted, ill-equipped and many succumbing to the virus.
Hospitals are now less prepared to deal with the pandemic than they were during the first wave, experts said.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, health experts from the Progressive Health Forum said an audit was conducted showing that South African hospitals were very poorly prepared to deal with the second wave of Covid-19, and now the government is conducting a ‘ frenzied cover-up ‘of his breach of warnings since September.
The only province that has responded to requests for improvements since September / October was the Western Cape, where the local government conducted its own audits and used its own channels for updates, he said.
With ill-equipped hospitals and healthcare workers coming under pressure, the country’s only hope is a successful vaccine launch, the forum said, something it said the government has already screwed up.
Vaccine problems
South Africa may have to wait months for its first vaccines even as other countries rush to roll out the vaccines, Bloomberg reported.
The government only hopes that the vaccines paid by a deposit to secure from the World Health Organization’s Covax program will arrive in the second quarter of 2021, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The wait bodes ill for a country facing a new, more virulent strain of the virus, record new infections, and a population increasingly avoiding social distancing.
Talks with pharmaceutical companies to supplement South Africa’s Covax allocation are ongoing, however it is unclear when or if those injections will be available as several wealthy nations have already paid upfront to pin down most of the production. initial.
“With a large number of advanced vaccine purchases, it will be difficult to skip the lines to try to secure earlier vaccine doses,” said Stavros Nicolaou, an executive at Aspen Pharmacare.
The Solidarity Fund, which was established to support the government’s response to the pandemic and is backed by some of the country’s largest companies and wealthiest individuals, paid Covax’s initial deposit of 283 million rand (19.3 millions of dollars).
It will cost South Africa a total of R2.7 billion to secure its full allocation of six million doses from the facility, enough to cover approximately 10% of the population.
Emerging cases
Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize said that South Africa recorded another 15,002 cases of Covid-19 as of January 2, 2021, bringing the country’s total to 1,088,889, with 29,175 deaths.
Recoveries have risen to 897,704, leaving a balance of 162,010 active cases in the country.
Mkhize said most of the comments from South Africans and critics of the lockdown have focused on Covid-19 vaccines and the availability, or lack thereof, for South Africa.
However, he said that while the focus on the vaccine is important, it distracts from the duty of all citizens to do what they can at this time to stop the spread of the virus.
“Vaccines have dominated the conversation and we appreciate that everyone shares our sense of urgency to acquire and distribute vaccines equitably, beginning with the most vulnerable in our population.
“However, I am concerned that the dominance of these issues takes our focus away from the things that will save our lives now. The fact is that the virus will continue to mutate and a new variant will always be discovered, that’s just a matter of time, ”he said.
The minister said the fact is that we do not have a vaccine at this time.
“The virus will not wait until these issues are resolved: no matter how fast we work. That is why it is important to continue using a mask, social distancing, washing hands and disinfecting, ”he said.
Read: South Africa risks lagging behind on vaccines
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