Gauteng’s private hospitals have been stretched to the limit by the rapid spread of the more easily transmitted Delta coronavirus variant, which is fuelling a surge in cases that has far exceeded the modelling projections used to prepare for the third wave, the CEO of JSE-listed Netcare said on Tuesday.
Hospitals were anticipating SA’s third wave of coronavirus infections would be less severe but last longer than previous surges, based on projections from the SA Covid-19 modelling consortium, researchers, and their own actuarial analysis.
Hospital admissions, which typically lag new infections by about a fortnight, initially followed the anticipated trend, but rapidly surged from mid-June as Delta took hold, said Netcare CEO Richard Friedland.
“There was no indication in the early phase of this wave in Gauteng that a new variant was at play. But around June 15, the [admission] numbers broke the trend line completely, and started rising exponentially,” he said in an interview with Business Day.
Delta is much more contagious than previous variants, and many more young people, and individuals in the same household have been infected in the current surge, he said.
Gauteng is bearing the brunt of SA’s third wave of coronavirus infections and accounted for 69% of the 12,222 new cases registered on June 28. The province’s daily new infections are expected to peak by next week, and hospital admissions after that, said Friedland.
The Delta variant has rapidly displaced the Beta variant in Gauteng. The latest analysis by the Network for Genomic Surveillance in SA estimates the prevalence of Delta in Gauteng at 75% by June 19, according to the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform director Tulio De Oliveira.
SA’s three biggest private hospital groups have all recorded significantly higher admissions for Covid-19 in Gauteng during the current wave, forcing them to transfer small numbers of patients to facilities in other provinces when regional capacity has been breached.
The development is a sharp reversal of the scenario that played out during SA’s second wave, when patients were transferred from coastal regions to Gauteng, which at the time was experiencing a relatively less severe second wave than other provinces. According to Discovery Health CEO Ryan Noach, between 40 and 50 patients were airlifted from the southern Cape when hospitals reached capacity.
Mediclinic Southern Africa chief clinical officer Gerrit de Villiers said 13 patients had been transferred from Gauteng to other provinces, one as far away as the Western Cape.
Life Healthcare CEO Peter Wharton-Hood said the group had airlifted 12 patients to other provinces, the majority of which went to KwaZulu-Natal, and Friedland said Netcare had transferred about 10 patients.
“We are experiencing a load in our hospitals the likes of which this group has never seen before,” said Wharton-Hood.
As of Tuesday, Life Healthcare had 1,010 Covid-19 patients in its Gauteng hospitals, compared with 709 at the peak of the second wave in early January and 639 at the peak of the first wave in July 2020, he said.
Mediclinic had 731 Covid-19 admissions, compared with admissions of 615 and 328 at the peak of the second and first waves, respectively, said De Villiers. “The Delta variant plays a huge role in this. There is no immunity to it in the community and it seems to be spreading extremely fast,” he said.
Netcare, which has the biggest Gauteng presence of the three JSE-listed groups, had 2,600 Covid-19 patients admitted to its facilities in the province, compared with 1,792 at the peak of the second wave and 1,377 at the peak of the first.
“That is a 44.9% increase in admissions in the third wave compared to the second wave and we have yet to peak,”
said Friedland.
The hospital groups welcomed the government’s decision to tighten coronavirus restrictions, saying they had the potential to slow transmission in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
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