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MKHIZE believes that the team from head office will be able to provide a coherent strategy on how to manage the infection outbreak from district to district.
“I also believe that we have been able to make adequate interventions to unlock the movement forward in terms of containment in this area.
“They will now reinforce the teams going out for community screening. Testing also needs to be reinforced, meaning that additional vans from the National Health Laboratory Services will be deployed to this area to improve the capacity for testing.”
He emphasised that residents should brace themselves for more positive cases in the Eastern Cape as more tests will be conducted.
“According to my own reading of the numbers, I feel that we need more testing because there might be more people infected. The number of deaths and reported positive cases does not match and this gives me the impression that we need to do rapid screening and testing so that we can actually discover the full extent of the prevalence of the infection in this area.”
Eastern Cape Health MEC, Sindiswa Gomba, confirmed that vacancies for nurses would be filled as soon as possible to help with the increased screening and testing.
“When you have a disaster, you do not only work with your permanent staff. You also reach out to those that can come on board either as volunteers or contract workers.
“As a province, we promised to look at the unemployed enrolled nurses that were trained by Lilitha (Nursing College) and we have started with that,” she said. “However, there is also a need to have more professionals. We do have a database of professionals who are not employed by government and can immediately come on board. We also have fresh retirees. These people won’t be permanently employed, but (will be) for the duration of the pandemic.”
