Durban - MEC for Health in KwaZulu-Natal, Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu announced that St Augustine's Hospital has been closed down and only one ward remains open where positive patients are being treated.
Speaking during a media briefing on Wednesday, Simelane-Zulu said the department was informed that the private medical facility did not take the necessary safety and preventative measures.
"We have closed down the hospital but this was done in phases. Firstly, we instructed that as of Wednesday last week, the hospital should not take any more patients. However, before we started discharging or transferring patients, we tested all the patients. With the treatment and results, we have been able to discharge patients, not infected with Covid-19, to other facilities," she said.
The MEC noted that there were reports which claimed that Netcare had not taken the necessary safety precautions.
She said due to the allegations, the EXCO has called for in-depth investigation so that they can understand what actually happened and what led to this facility having such a high number of infections and deaths.
"By the way, of the deaths in KZN, five of those deaths comes from St Augustine's Hospital," she said.
Also addressing the media, KwaZulu-Natal Premier, Sihle Zikalala, that the province's Executive Council has called on Netcare's management to inform them of the details of how the Covid-19 positive cases were handled.
"We are not judging, we are still observing the situation. We were informed that 1982 people were tested and of those, 735 were permanent staff and 112 of those were nurses, cleaning staff and administrative staff. We were also told that 74 patients were tested," he said.
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