SA’s third-biggest private hospital group, Netcare, is bracing for an expected surge in coronavirus infections in Gauteng, which could meet the technical definition for a third wave within the next week, says CEO Richard Friedland.
A third wave will occur when the seven-day moving average of new cases exceeds 30% of the previous wave’s peak, according to the definition used by the SA Covid-19 Modelling Consortium.
The consortium’s latest resurgence analysis, which was released on Monday, shows two of Gauteng’s five districts — Sedibeng and West Rand — have already entered a new wave of infections, but the province as a whole has not.
"It does look like Gauteng is most probably going to go into a third wave, and it may occur within the next seven days," said Friedland.
"In the peak of the pandemic in the second wave, there were more than 5,100 cases per day in Gauteng. If we were to have a third wave, we would need to see in excess of 1,700 cases per day on a moving seven-day average. We are currently at 1,300 and we have had three weeks of increases," he said.
"We haven’t let our guard down since the first wave. We have been refining our systems [and] are fully equipped and ready," said Friedland in an interview with Business Day, shortly after releasing Netcare’s interim results for the six months to March 31.
Scramble
After numerous setbacks and delays, SA finally began its mass coronavirus vaccination campaign last week. The programme got off to a relatively slow start but is expected to ramp up significantly in the coming weeks as authorities scramble to blunt the effect of the upswing in new infections.
SA recorded a seven-day moving average of 3,105 new cases per day on May 24, compared with this year’s low on April 7 of a seven-day moving average of 778 cases per day.
As of Sunday, the government had vaccinated 642,946 people, approximately 480,000 of whom are health-care workers who were inoculated under the Sisonke study.
Netcare managed to return to profit in its first half to end-March, despite a severe second Covid-19 wave. But the recovery fell short of the company’s pre-pandemic performance.
Netcare, whose focus is almost entirely on SA, said that better management and protocols helped it post a R375m profit in its 2021 half-year, from a loss of R196m in the previous six months.
The pandemic hit SA hospitals hard, with many patients staying away and deferring elective surgeries.
Covid-19 has also prompted additional expenditure on equipment, health and safety, while other effects have included a fall-off in revenue from coffee shops and parking fees.
The hospital group said it improved bed management during the second wave, thanks to the introduction of rapid antigen tests and more effective treatment regimens that reduced the length of stay for Covid-19 patients.
During the peak of the second wave in January, despite a substantial increase in admissions, only about 60% of total beds were allocated to Covid-19 patients compared with about 80% during the peak of the first wave in July 2020.
Netcare’s revenue fell 5.9% to R10.8bn year on year to end-March but it was up almost a quarter relative to the second half to end-September.
Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) — or core profit — fell just more than a third year on year to R1.49bn but surged 654% relative to the second half of Netcare’s 2020 year.
Friedland said about 30,000 of the 43,000 health-care workers based at Netcare facilities had been vaccinated against Covid-19 so far and only a "very small percentage" had declined. These workers included employees, doctors and contractors. A total of 76 Netcare health-care workers had died from Covid-19, he said.
Netcare is planning mass vaccination sites at three large hospitals — Milpark in Johannesburg, St Augustine’s in Durban and N1 City in Cape Town — as well as smaller vaccination sites at 30 Medicross facilities.
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