“We are relieved now because the numbers are down and
patients are no longer that sick,” nurse Constance Mathibela told AFP at
Thembisa Hospital, in a township east of Johannesburg.
After the epidemic hit its stride, the hospital “was almost
full everyday,” she recalled.
“There was no time when we had an empty (Covid) ward. It was
just a continuous (flow of) things.”
South Africa recorded its first case of coronavirus on March
5 last year.
It has since been through two virus storms, recording over
1.5 million cases and more than 50,000 deaths — the highest in all of Africa.
But on Sunday President Cyril Ramaphosa declared that the
second wave, fuelled by a new, more contagious, variant, was now over.
The nationwide tally of daily new infections fell to just
over 500 this week after peaking at more than 21,000 on January 7.
Ramaphosa’s announcement was welcome news for many medical
workers who have been driven to the brink of burnout.
But with a vaccination drive having started only last month,
they are also bracing for a possible third wave.
Scientists believe it could land with the onset of the
southern hemisphere winter, around May or June.
‘Very scary’
Workers at Thembisa — the public hospital of a township that
is alternatively spelt Tembisa — relived the surges of previous waves.
“At the beginning it was very scary because we didn’t know
Covid at all,” said Mathibela, the first nurse to work in a Covid-19 ward at
the hospital.
Another senior nurse, Salome Nkoana, said that in those
early days, frontline workers struggled to care for patients suffering from an
unfamiliar infection, all the while fearing that they could fall sick too.
“Every day when I went home, I prayed… ‘God, can you please
help me to go through this?'”
“Now I’m exhausted, I need leave,” said the nurse, dressed
in blue scrubs, as she went through patients’ notes.
One of the least documented aspects of the epidemic is the
mental toll inflicted on health workers as they watched patients struggle with
the disease and pass away.
“We were so depressed, all of us,” said Nkoana, recalling a
terrible day when five patients died.
“Emotionally it stressed us a lot,” observed Phuti Kobo, 39,
another ward manager. “One death (alone) is enough to traumatise nurses.”
“If you had more than five in a day, that was a real trauma,
but we managed through it all.”
Now the “wards are much quieter…no more ventilated
patients,” she added cheerfully.
In the male ward, a Covid-19 patient dressed in
green-and-white striped hospital pyjamas, lay on a bed, listening to music on
his earphones — a therapy for anxiety as he underwent treatment.
AFP was granted access to the hospital after several requests in the face of a de facto media blackout on healthcare institutions during the pandemic.
Dread of third wave
The daily number of Covid admissions at Thembisa has fallen
by around 80 percent from the peak early this year, from around 100 to about
20.
But the let-up may be just temporary.
“We are just imagining how worse it is going to be, how bad
is it going to be,” said Kobo.
“Is it going to be the same as the first or second wave or
is it going to be worse?”
On the plus side, the enemy is far better known today than
it was a year ago.
The hospital’s clinical manager, Dr Sasiwe Mbeleki, said
planning was already underway for a possible new surge in cases.
“We will be much wiser when we approach the third wave,”
said Kobo. “We are ready.”
AFP
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