Covid-19:Western Cape begins to breathe more easily:
Mark van der Heever, spokesperson for the Western Cape Health Department, said at the moment they are using a little more than half of what they have been.
As soon as Smith saw the Covid pandemic hitting countries in Asia and Europe, he knew he would need to plan ahead for when it reached South Africa. The first week of lockdown also saw a massive pay-off for Smith’s foresight, which ended up being a game changer for the hospital’s capability to care for Covid patients.
“That is why we were able to handle the extra oxygen demand. It was an absolute lifesaver on many levels.” Groote Schuur was built with small pipes which can only deliver a certain amount of gas at any given time. But thanks to the planning of the engineers who designed the hospital, the pipe network is structured in rings which allow the gas flow to be doubled if needed. It was Smith’s job to carefully juggle the pressures throughout the system to deliver the required amount of gas without pushing it below or above the safety limits.
“They came to us and said 'we need to run a new system of high-flow nasal oxygen at 60 litres per minute to the patient'. The average supply is designed for 30 litres per minute, at a push,” Smith said.
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