Alcohol is complicating fight against Covid-19, says a trauma surgeon

The fight against the deadly Covid-19 is being complicated by the spike in trauma cases that are related to alcohol. Photo: Twitter/Dyl Matthews

The fight against the deadly Covid-19 is being complicated by the spike in trauma cases that are related to alcohol. Photo: Twitter/Dyl Matthews

Published Jul 2, 2020

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Johannesburg - The fight against the deadly Covid-19 is being complicated by the spike in trauma cases related to alcohol.

This was revealed by Professor Steve Moeng, the director of Trauma Surgery at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, who said the number of trauma cases they were dealing with had been increasing with the relaxation of each lockdown level.

Moeng, speaking at the Gauteng Provincial Command Council on Covid-19 on Thursday, said there had been an 80% increase in trauma cases as the load was going up with different levels of lockdown.

"South Africa sees more trauma than what we see in war torn countries," Moeng said, adding that for health workers to be able to work and deal with the high load of increased Covid-19 cases, citizens would need to take matters in their own hands and behave responsibly.

"If we can have responsible drinking, hopefully the load to healthcare workers will be reduced. Most of the trauma we see is preventable," he said.

Moeng also said people were letting their guard now as was evidenced by the number of new Covid-19 cases that have gone up in the past two weeks.

Premier David Makhura said the pace at which the pandemic was moving was "very fast".

He said Gauteng was experiencing the largest number of active cases as well as daily infections rates.

He also said there had been a dramatic drop in recoveries too while hospitalisations had increased exponentially.

So far, he said, 144 people were on ventilators daily.

Makhura said, as it is, they could not throw their hands in the air and say there was nothing they could do.

He said they were in the process of making representations to the National Command Council to reinstate stringent lockdown measures. He said what they were thinking of was a localised lockdown in areas where infections rates were getting out of control and people were ignoring measures put in place.

Regarding schools reopening, Makhura said learners would put pressure on the system as 589 schools had been found to have Covid-19 cases while 184 learners and 428 teachers were infected.

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