[imagesource: BBC]

After more than 150 days of national lockdown, we have finally reached the point where South Africa’s ‘surge’ is ending, and the ‘plateau’ has started.

At the same time, experts agree that now is not the time for any sort of dropping of the guard, with fears of a ‘second surge’ very much warranted, based on evidence from countries around the world.

Our daily confirmed cases may now be levelling out, but the full extent of the strain our healthcare sector was placed under during the COVID-19 peak is still emerging.

A new BBC investigation, undertaken with the help of a whistleblower that spoke with reporter Andrew Harding, points to a gross failure at Gauteng’s Sebokeng Hospital:

Suspected Covid-19 patients were routinely left for hours in an open tent [pictured above], in sub-zero temperatures, outside a South African hospital during the mid-winter peak of the pandemic, leading to “many” people dying of suspected hypothermia…

“It was freezing in that tent. As soon as night falls it’s horrible, you can see the patients declining. Hypothermia is one of the major causes of death here. Especially in that tent,” said a doctor at Sebokeng Hospital – a whistleblower who spoke to us on condition of anonymity.

The doctor said 14 people had reportedly died in the tent over one 48-hour period – though not all of hypothermia.

“We’re tired and sad and fearful for our patients. I ask myself how many people need to die unnecessarily for there to be an adequate investigation,” she said.

The peak of the crisis came during July, when temperatures dropped and patients were reported to have “collapsed” after going days without being attended to.

The doctor went on to call the lack of resources in the tent “an absolute joke”:

“We don’t have drugs. No ventilator equipment. There was PPE lying all over the place, waiting to infect more people,” said the doctor, who complained that a number of medical staff had caught the virus as a result of the conditions.

Multiple staff at the hospital said they confronted management regarding how the COVID-19 relief funds were being used, as they “haven’t seen that money”, but were never given answers.

Meanwhile, PPE and other tenders were handed out to the politically connected, and in some cases, people who were no longer alive.

The mother of one person who died at the hospital last month called it “corruption and carelessness”, pointing out how her son had told her he was going to die without a blanket, and that “nobody’s taking care of me”.

When presented with these allegations, a spokesperson for the Gauteng Department of Health, Kwara Kekana, issued a strenuous denial.

The local government minister in charge of health in Gauteng Province, Bandile Masuku, was recently forced to take a leave of absence following corruption allegations against him…

Investigators are examining more than 100 Covid-19-related contracts in the province.

“This pandemic has exposed a lot of our system’s flaws. But hopefully we can do something about it,” said the whistleblower.

As South Africans, perhaps all we can do is vote.

The ruling party has blood on its hands, and will never truly hold itself accountable until citizens at voting booths do.

[source:bbc]