Western Cape reports 49% drop in COVID-19 cases


The decision to impose a stricter lockdown in the Western Cape appears to be paying off, say provincial authorities.
Major Covid-19 indicators are all showing a downward trend. Hospitalisations, test positivity rates, active infections, health worker infections, deaths, the virus reproductive number and the use of oxygen have all decreased.
The current number of Covid- 19 cases are similar to those recorded during the second week of December last year, Western Cape Deputy Director of Communications Mark van der Heever told Health-e News. At the peak of the second wave in late December, the province surpassed the number of cases experienced during the peak of the first wave of Covid-19 infections.
The province’s hospitals have since seen a 37% drop in admissions, and the number of recorded deaths has dropped by 11%, as at 27 January 2021.
“These data confirm that we have passed the peak of our second wave and are on a downward trajectory on all measures. As further confirmation, our proportion positive has dropped below 20% from a high of over 50%,” said van der Heever.
Update on the coronavirus
29 January 2021As of 1pm on 29 January, the Western Cape has 14 658 active Covid-19 infections with a total of 265 789 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 240 939 recoveries
Statement: https://t.co/oEmqSFdEtS pic.twitter.com/WJhOvYcx5n
— Premier Alan Winde (@alanwinde) January 29, 2021
Lessons learnt to expand capacity
Lessons learnt during the peak of the first wave of infections helped the province to better prepare for the second wave. Field hospitals remained key in the response to the pandemic. The Western Cape continued to operate from field hospitals in the metro, such as the Brackengate Hospital of Hope, which provided 338 additional beds during the crisis.
Placing additional beds in towns and rural hospitals also bolstered the health department’s response. Authorities expanded the capacity of existing facilities like those in Worcester, George, Hermanus, Vredendal and Paarl to deal with Covid-19, and beyond. The Western Cape were made provision for 685 intermediate Covid-19 care beds and added 72 acute beds to rural hospitals since March 2020.
Contingency plans for the supply of oxygen also made a difference.
“Afrox has continued to bring additional oxygen into the province daily, to augment the provincial supplies. There are 232 tons in all hospital tanks and the bulk store has 169 tons in reserve. The Western Cape now has four bulk oxygen tankers allocated for the daily delivery of oxygen supplies during this week,” said van der Heever.
PHOTO: Demonstrators hold banners during a protest at the beach in Muizenberg against the government's ban on people enjoying the beach, in Cape Town. The ban is part of the South African government's Level 3 lockdown regulations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. #NTVNews
📸 AFP pic.twitter.com/97pzI8CJoy
— NTV UGANDA (@ntvuganda) January 31, 2021
Other changes include transferring patients from hospitals facing a shortage of beds to those with capacity.
The province also developed a dashboard to track daily bed capacity, which linked to oxygen capacity and the number of healthcare staff available. An additional 883 healthcare professionals were recruited recently while another 311 have yet to respond to employment offers.—Health-e News
Author
Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Western Cape reports 49% drop in COVID-19 cases
by Soligah Solomons, Health-e News
February 1, 2021
MOST READ
Tembisa hospital open to the public, cause of fire under investigation
Gauteng Health’s cost-cutting measures could leave patients waiting over 4 months for care
Tembisa Hospital closed to new patients following emergency unit fire
Eastern Cape Health struggles to repair weather-damaged facilities
EDITOR'S PICKS
Related

Setting fire to desks with sanitiser and other pandemic risks as schools reopen

Spare a thought for EMS workers as Covid-19 rages, says federation president

Some food prices actually dropped in January, but people are short of cash

Setting fire to desks with sanitiser and other pandemic risks as schools reopen

Spare a thought for EMS workers as Covid-19 rages, says federation president
