Doctors at Steve Biko Academic Hospital say they feel helpless and hopeless to help the scores of patients arriving at the facility daily.
Faced with gravely ill patients, a lack of personal protective equipment, overcrowding, increased pressure and poor working conditions, the doctors who spoke to
Daily Maverick on condition of anonymity said more and more patients were dying on their watch.
Nurses stand at the entrance of the emergency unit at Steve Biko Academic Hospital where they conduct Covid screening on everyone who enters. (Photo: Shiraaz Mohamed)
“I don’t feel like I am being protected by our hospital right now. I am running around like a chicken without a head. I feel very hopeless. I feel like I should not care anymore. Caring is actually just hurting me and the patients because instead of me doing what I said I was going to do when I left medicine, I am treating these people like numbers. Someone dies and you have to shrug your shoulders and move on to the next.
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KZN Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu has denied rumours that there are no beds available for Covid-19 patients
She said they were at 66% occupancy of the 3 477 beds for isolation that were available.
She admitted that public healthcare was under pressure.
Allegations that there is a shortage of hospital beds in KwaZulu-Natal due to Covid-19 are false, Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu said on Wednesday.
She admitted that the public healthcare system was under strain, but rubbished rumours that there are no beds and that all mortuaries were full. Yes, the public healthcare system is under pressure, and so are our counterparts in the private sector. And yes, the situation is not normal, and far from ideal. But to claim that there are no beds or mortuary space is disingenuous, misleading, and completely unnecessary, she said in a press briefing.
Frederick Health Hospital will receive and store nearly 1,000 coronavirus vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech in the coming days, a hospital spokeswoman said Monday.
Kelsey Shupe, director of marketing and communications of Frederick Health Hospital, wrote in an email the hospital will receive roughly 975 vaccines, but â[does] not have an exact delivery date from Pfizer at this time. However, as soon as we receive the vaccines, we are prepared to act quickly, making the vaccine available to our frontline staff as soon as possible.â
The vaccine is a two-step process, with the first dose being administered in the arm and the second being administered about three weeks after, also in the arm, said Shupe and Dr. Randall Culpepper, the county health departmentâs deputy health officer and medical officer.