Eastern Cape government concerned about increasing number of hospitalisations due to COVID-19

The Eastern Cape government has raised concerns about the increasing number of admissions in both private and public health facilities. Over the past 24 hours the province has recorded 105 COVID-19 deaths.

Social gatherings particularly among the youth are one of the driving factors of infections.  Survivors of this deadly virus count themselves lucky to have defeated it.

Busisiwe Jemsana-Mantashe contracted the virus when she was seven months pregnant. She feared she would lose her life.

“When the symptoms got severe and I got really sick.  I remember my husband saying; ‘Now it’s about you surviving, if the baby doesn’t survive we will make other babies’ and from that point it took everything (to survive) but still I experienced severe symptoms.  I remember watching my husband going up and down and I thought, this one is going to be without a wife.”

The government has warned that unless people comply with the safety regulations, the death toll will continue rising. “If people don’t comply with the infection control regulations they’re going to put our hospitals,  the entire health system under pressure and there is no system in the world that copes with high hospitalisation of people because of COVID-19 and it is worse now,” says  Eastern Cape government spokesperson Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha.

To date, the province has recorded a total of 6 155 deaths and close to 150 000 have recovered. The latest coronavirus stats: