RISING Covid-19 infections among health-care workers are once again putting strain on staffing at Western Cape public hospitals, with over 70% of infected clinical staff in isolation.
According to figures from the provincial head of health, Dr Keith Cloete, there are currently 1 552 active cases among health-care workers. Of those, 1 116 clinical staff – including 233 doctors, 638 nurses and 245 other workers – were in isolation as of Monday.
During the provincial government’s weekly Covid-19 briefing, Cloete said infections among health-care workers were rapidly rising. This comes as as 1 176 cases were recorded on December 1.
“There are varying numbers of people not reporting for duty because they are in isolation, and the people that have been in contact with them are in quarantine. It is across all places,” he said.
“The bigger the hospital is (means) there are different parts that will be affected, like a maternity or theatre complex, but it is easier in bigger hospitals to shift people around to be able to keep the service going.
“You can imagine if the same number of people are not able to work in much smaller places. That is why our smaller facilities are struggling more – because they have fewer people.
“There are staff shortages everywhere – Tygerberg, Groote Schuur, Red Cross (all) have staff shortages. In bigger places like Tygerberg, people are getting a combination of agency staff and redirecting their own activities and people in order to manage the service.
“Our appeal to people getting services is that you are potentially going to wait because our staff are not on duty because they have to isolate or quarantine. We are asking for patience.”
At Tygerberg, around 90 nurses are said to be off work and either isolating or quarantining.
Chairperson of the Tygerberg branch of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union Denzel Rossouw told Weekend Argus they had a meeting with management to address staffing challenges on Tuesday.
“We had a meeting with nursing management (on Tuesday) and they informed us that 90 nurses were in isolation (and quarantined). We do not know yet how the other departments are affected,” he said.
“This means that the work of those workers now falls on the remaining personnel who have to carry the workload.”
The chairperson for labour and a shop steward of the Health & Other Services Personnel Trade Union of South Africa said the meeting came after severe shortages were noted over the weekend.
“The matter was raised after it came out that 52 nurses were not on duty this past weekend, and this resulted in there being two nurses per ward, and that was a major problem,” he said.
“We then agreed that they needed to come up with a plan of action on how they (management) would be able to cover the (shortages) and, according to them, the hospital does not have money to replace those shortages of staff.
“There are serious implications for an already overworked staff at the institution. If the department does not come up with a solution, then that means that nurses will find ways to stay out of work.
“This will affect patients as well if your staff are too tired to do the work. The fact that so many nurses in a theatre contracted Covid-19 shows (that there are) serious challenges. If management does not come up with a plan of action to deal with infections at the institution, or bringing in support to assist, then they have no other alternative but to close down theatres.”
According to sources, the staff shortages have impacted on turnaround times for surgeries after the hospital implemented a de-escalation of non-emergency services. But insiders said this was also impacting urgent surgeries that were piling up on a waiting list.
Spokesperson for Tygerberg Hospital Laticia Pienaar said that, as cases in the province increase, so too have the numbers of health-care workers who are in isolation and quarantine.
“The rescheduling of planned surgeries is part of the provincial Covid response plan. Tygerberg Hospital also has an annual decrease of planned surgery during the festive season, which was due to start this week. As a result of the high rate of infections in staff, this was brought forward by a few days. Thus, theatre space at Tygerberg is currently reserved for emergency cases only,” she said.
“Larger hospitals such as Tygerberg have access to agency staff, and will reorganise and reprioritise services internally to keep up with the demand for health services and emergency treatment. The department regrets inconvenience to patients and will be in touch to reschedule as soon as possible.”