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A nurse performs a smear test for Covid-19.
- An early outlier in the local Covid-19 epidemic, the Eastern Cape is experiencing a resurgence of Covid-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths.
- As of Thursday, 710 people were admitted to hospitals in the province, 45 to the ICU and 52 with a ventilator, an increase of 226 admissions in the last week.
- On average over the past seven days, cases in the province increased by 545 per day, the highest level of daily cases reported since August.
The number of cases and hospitalizations as a result of Covid-19 in the Eastern Cape is experiencing a resurgence after weeks of continuous, but slow, transmission.
The official data reported show that in the month of October the province began to see an upward trend in the number of cases and hospital admissions and the first signs are clear that a long-warned “second wave” has reached the province weather.
The severity of the resurgence is widely expected to be less deadly than the initial surge in cases, but it is unclear whether the outbreaks will be brought under control in time.
As of Thursday, 710 people were admitted to 98 hospitals (public and private) in the province. This was the highest number of concurrent admissions the province had seen to date, based on available data.
Fifty-two of those people were on a ventilator and 45 were in the ICU.
This, compared to the 484 people admitted last Friday, October 30.
The number of reported Covid-1 hospital admissions in the Eastern Cape over time. (Graphic – News24 Covid-19 Control Panel)
According to data reported by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), a total of 13 101 people had been admitted to a hospital in the province since the start of the local coronavirus epidemic.
3,471 of these patients died, while 8,844 were discharged.
The province reported a total of 3 813 deaths from Covid-19 and 90 919 recoveries.
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News24 understands that the majority of new admissions are to hospitals in Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City, including public and private hospitals. The capacity of these hospitals to handle the number of patients is unclear.
In July, Eastern Cape Prime Minister Oscar Mabuyane said the province’s hospitals were “overwhelmed” and asked military doctors for help.
On Thursday, the national Health Department reported 758 new cases of Covid-19, the largest increase in cases in a day in the province since July.
However, it is not clear how many tests are performed daily, as the department does not report totals for daily tests by province.
Delays in processing test results and additional delays in reporting mean that reported official data can take five to ten days. Therefore, the actual situation in the Eastern Cape, particularly in the Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City metro, is likely to be worse or better than the picture presented by the reported data.
The number of Covid-19 cases reported in the Eastern Cape over time. (Graphic – News24 Covid-19 Control Panel)
This is a developing story.
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