South
African hospitals are currently not overwhelmed by the Covid-19 pandemic,
acting director-general of the Department of Health, Anban Pillay, said on
Monday.
Pillay and Health Minister Zweli
Mkhize addressed the Portfolio Committee on Health and the Select Committee on
Health and Social Services in a virtual meeting early on Monday morning.
Pillay said at the moment there
isn’t a high demand for high care of Covid-19 patients.
“Our hospitals are currently
not overwhelmed,” he said.
According to one of the graphs he
presented to the committees, based on figures as at 25 April, 353 patients were
in hospitals around the country, the highest being in KwaZulu-Natal at 143.
Of that, 42 patients were in
intensive care units, the highest number being in the Western Cape, with 19.
The Free State and North West had no patients in intensive care units, while
Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape have no patients in hospitals at all.
‘Less rush’ for ventilator use
Mkhize said at the moment there
also hasn’t been a lot of ventilator usage.
According to the department’s
statistics, as at 25 April, 27 patients were on ventilators – nine in the
Western Cape, eight each in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape and two in
KwaZulu-Natal.
Mkhize said the current thinking
on treating Covid-19 patients places “less rush to putting people on
invasive ventilators”.
He added that there are 288
quarantine sites, with around 23 000 beds. Currently, around 207 sites are
active, in line with demand.
People in quarantine are mostly
those who can’t self-isolate, and repatriated citizens. Due to the latter
arriving at OR Tambo International Airport, most of the quarantine sites are in
Gauteng.
Mkhize said communities need to
be encouraged to not store human remains for too long. In total, there are
storage facilities for about 36 000 human remains – 28 000 in the private
sector and 8 000 in the public sector.
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