Hospitals overwhelmed as Johannesburg runs out of oxygen
Public and private hospitals in Johannesburg, South Africa’s most densely populated city, are struggling to cope with a wave of new Covid-19 infections.
The situation is now so bad that the health authority for Gauteng province, whose capital is Johannesburg, no longer has enough life-saving oxygen to deliver to the region’s hospitals, according to Professor Francois Venter, a senior researcher at the University of Witwatersrand.
“[The government is] woefully unprepared and then they didn’t plan. How can they run out of oxygen? It is outrageous. The [health system] is sporadically collapsing in some places,” said Professor Venter.
In March, the South African government was quick to enforce a harsh lockdown when there were few cases of the virus in the country. However, after this caused catastrophic damage to the economy, President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced to lift most of the measures in June.
In recent weeks, the virus has roared through Africa’s most developed and urbanised nation, hitting more than 10,000 new infections a day. The country now has more than 216,000 recorded cases and 3,500 deaths from the virus.
South Africa’s original coronavirus hotspot was the city of Cape Town and the wider Western Cape region, which is popular with tourists. However, there is now widespread community transmission among the more than 4.4m residents of Johannesburg.
Many of Johannesburg’s clinics, which play a crucial role referring patients to hospitals, are being overwhelmed. Some are said to be no longer answering calls and others have closed because their staff have contracted the coronavirus. This has left some sick people walking or taking shared taxis between different clinics, desperately trying to find the medical attention they need.
Hospitals are not faring any better. According to local media reports, the city’s Baragwanath Chris Hani hospital, which touts itself as the largest hospital on the African continent, is now completely full. Reportedly the city’s Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital can also no longer take patients.
At the same time, medics and academics say the soaring coronavirus caseload is wreaking havoc on South Africa’s other major health crises: the HIV and tuberculosis epidemics. Almost five million South Africans are on life-saving antiretroviral drugs but in recent weeks the delivery of this HIV therapy has been severely disrupted by the pandemic.
A survey by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis last month found that HIV prevention programmes have been interrupted because they depend on face-to-face interventions that have been rendered impossible during lockdowns. There have also been shortages of vital antiretroviral treatment because of restrictions on movement.
And a modelling study from the World Health Organization and UNAIDS has estimated that there could be 500,000 extra deaths from Aids in sub-Saharan Africa in just six months. That would set the clock back over a decade, taking the total to the 2008 level.
Prof Venter said it would take at least a year to catch up on childhood immunisations which were stopped as the pandemic emerged in March.
He is scathing of the government's management of the pandemic, which he said was as “shambolic as in the UK in the beginning…as the NHS had been so underfunded”.
“It’s going to be torrid next week, and then the following weeks will be grim, there will be rampant community transmission especially around here in Johannesburg which is so overcrowded.
“It is all so disappointing,” he said.
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