Editorial
Johannesburg - The Gauteng Department of Health speaks a good fight in the war against COVID 19, but its words jar with reports from the frontline. The department is confident in its ability to address the third wave of the pandemic where infections have already surpassed the worst-case scenarios of the experts.
There are anecdotal reports of shortages of oxygen, triaging of patients in parking lots and yet there are no plans to activate the province’s two massive field hospitals. Nasrec and FNB Stadium were identified at the very beginning of the lockdown. FNB was never converted but Nasrec was decommissioned in February.
Here we are four months later with precisely the spike in infections that we warned to expect. The difference is that it took until Thursday for Premier David Makhura to railroad the opening of the undamaged sections of the vitally important Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, which has been effectively closed since the fire raged through it in April with disastrous consequences for an already struggling state health system.
We want to believe the provincial department of health. We want to believe that there is no need for the activation of the two field hospitals, but the anecdotal evidence would suggest otherwise. There is no sign whatsoever of the infection rate tapering off, on the contrary, it was Makhura himself who said the situation in Gauteng was completely out of control.
There is no sign either of us ever ramping up the vaccination rate to the level where it ought to be for a population of our size. Yesterday in an act of brazen political expediency, the opposition EFF organised a super-spreader event in Pretoria for a pointless protest about vaccines that haven’t even been submitted for approval.
We would do well to remember all of this, when the body bags start getting zipped closed.