More than a month after SA confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on March 5, 40% of health-care professionals did not know what the incubation period of the disease was and more than a third incorrectly believed they should be using specialised masks even for low-risk tasks such as triaging patients, according to a survey released on Thursday.
The results highlight yawning gaps in the training provided to health-care professionals during the rapidly evolving pandemic, and how these deficiencies have fuelled anxiety about contracting the contagious disease.
The nature of their work puts health-care professionals at higher risk of getting infected with the coronavirus than the general population, and labour unions have consistently sounded the alarm about inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment. While there are well documented shortages of essential supplies, the survey indicates there is also confusion about the equipment required for different tasks.
The survey was carried out by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson Mandela School of Medicine between 11 April and May 7, and included doctors, nurses, and a wide range of other health-care professionals in all nine provinces.
At the time, the national health department’s guidelines stipulated that N95 masks were to be used for procedures that generated potentially infectious aerosolised droplets, such as sample collection, and in critical care units. But 37.8% of survey respondents said N95 masks should be used when triaging general patients. The guidelines say health-care practitioners should use a surgical mask, and maintain a distance of at least 1.5m when they screen patients in triage.
At the time of the survey a third of the respondents said they had received no Covid-19 training at all, and only half the survey respondents said they had received adequate training on infection control.
A strong theme emerging from the findings was the vulnerability of nurses, who expressed lower confidence in their knowledge of Covid-19 and a greater perception of their risk from the disease, said Mosa Moshabela, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
“We would have hoped for a high level of confidence, as by that time the pandemic was well under way,” he said.
When quizzed about their self-perceived risk of contracting Covid-19, 72.6% of nurses said they felt they were at high risk, compared to 61% of doctors and 49.2% of other health-care practitioners. A significantly higher proportion of nurses (24.7%) expressed severe psychological stress, compared to doctors (14.3%) and other health-care professionals (18.5%).
Health-care workers account for about 5% of SA’s confirmed Covid-19 cases, a proportion considerably lower than the global average of 10%, according to health minister Zweli Mkhize. By August 2, more than 24,100 health-care workers had been infected with the disease, and 181 had died, he said earlier in the week.
Up to Wednesday, SA had recorded almost 530,000 cases of Covid-19, and close to 9,300 deaths.
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