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The long-feared Covid-19 surge has arrived in South Africa, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told members of Parliament (MPs) on Wednesday and warned that it would see Gauteng and the Eastern Cape run out of hospital beds to accommodate patients within four weeks.
"We have now reached the surge, the storm we have consistently warned South Africa about, has now arrived," Mkhize told a sitting of the National Assembly.
The minister added that confirmed cases at 215, 855 and fatalities at 3,502, the pandemic was touching the lives of all South Africans.
"We are now at a point where it’s our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, close friends and comrades that are infected," he said.
He said the latest modelling showed fewer expected infections than even the more optimistic scenarios reflected in earlier modelling exercises.
It meant that at the moment South Africa had adequate hospital beds for the number cases that required admission but said facilities in all provinces would still be overrun, some sooner than others.
"Model projections indicate that while the epidemic is predicted to peak nationally at a similar time to the previously projected optimistic curve (that is mid-August), it does so at a lower level... While the model projects a lower need for hospital (non-ICU) and ICU beds at a national level, bed capacity is still expected to be breached or overwhelmed in all provinces.
"Currently planned hospital beds in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng are projected to be insufficient for combined non-ICU bed demand and the overflow from ICU once ICU capacity has been breached.
"Bed capacity is expected to be breached in the next four weeks," he said.
- African News Agency (ANA)
