Provinces across South Africa established field hospitals to cope with the surge of Covid-19 patients but with an excess of beds, some provinces are now dismantling their facilities while others retain them, fearing a surge in infections.
Field hospitals are no longer necessary and South Africa has started to dismantle some of the facilities that were established as a contingency measure to assist established facilities during the coronavirus pandemic, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced on Monday.
Speaking on the move to Level 2 of the lockdown, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, after a meeting with premiers, said there would be a temporary suspension on the building of new field hospitals as existing institutions had sufficient capacity, including space in intensive care units and ventilators.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Gauteng government said it has “reconsidered” plans to develop new field hospitals but it’s not planning to close the 1,500-bed hospital established at Nasrec. The spokesperson for the Eastern Cape Department of Health did not respond to requests to comment on whether the province plans to continue to operate its field hospital in Port Elizabeth or whether it stillMédecins Sans Frontières , which partnered with the Western Cape government to run the Thusong field hospital in Khayelitsha, recently said, “Moving forward, MSF calls for Covid-19 care in the country to become reactive, and that authorities ideally capacitate existing hospitals...
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