Pretoria hospitals address capacity issues

Hospitals across Pretoria have been placed under a lot of pressure because of the second Covid-19 surge and had to take urgent measures prepared to address capacity.

Private healthcare company Netcare announced on Tuesday that it has set up a temporary facility at its Montana hospital in the north of Pretoria to cope with a surge in Covid-positive patients.

This as the group now has more than 3 000 Covid-positive patients in its hospitals across the country, according to Netcare CEO Richard Friedland.

To cope, the group has in the past two weeks opened three temporary facilities known as clinical decision units (CDUs) across the country.

“These CDUs can accommodate an additional 116 patients,” he said.

Friedland said despite the CDUs, critical care units in many of their hospitals remained under enormous pressure even though they have increased the capacity of these highly specialised units.

“Additional staffing, oxygen supply and ventilators, as well as the conversion of more hospital beds to Covid-19 red zones where needed have enabled us to significantly ramp up the capacity for the second wave.”

“We have also suspended non-urgent elective surgical and medical admissions to our hospitals since just before Christmas last year. However, medically necessary, time sensitive surgeries are continuing in cases where postponement could result in patients’ outcomes or quality of life being significantly altered.

He said resumption of non-urgent elective surgery in their hospitals will depend on the course of the pandemic.

This may be done in stages, i.e., at different times in different regions, as Covid-19 cases in certain regions decrease.

Life Healthcare regional manager Johan Holder said they saw a drop in the number of Covid-19 patients in Gauteng.

“NCID reports suggest that the second wave may have passed its peak,” said Holder.

“Because of this, we are not currently not preparing for additional capacity right now. However, we continue to monitor the situation. All Life Healthcare hospitals have a Covid-19 committee that works closely with hospital management daily.”

Mediclinic Southern Africa chief clinical officer Dr Gerrit de Villiers said they were still experiencing significant patient volumes in Gauteng as well as other provinces.

“Where possible we have implemented additional measures to increase capacity,” he said. “But our resources, notably staffing, emergency centre capacity and critical care resources, are under significant strain and in many instances, at capacity.

De Villiers said they were seeing high occupancies with significant volumes of patients in emergency centres.

“ICU beds and ventilators have experienced the biggest strain with many hospitals’ ICU and high care beds and ventilators fully occupied.”

He said their current ventilator capacity and high flow oxygen device capacity is under extreme pressure because of high demand.

“This is a fluid situation which changes daily. We purchased additional ventilators and oxygen delivery devices for certain hospitals where the infrastructure allowed for additional capacity to be deployed.

During a visit to Steve Biko academic hospital recently, health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said although the hospital experienced a high number of admissions, they were not full.

“If patients fill up the hospitals, they can be moved to the Nasrec field hospital. The issue of shortage of staff has been resolved and the hospital has also employed more than 33 nurses and four doctors to assist with admissions. Oxygen, beds, and fever tents were also increased.

“We will be responding quickly to match the number of people infected with Covid-19,’’ he said.

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