NEHAWU statement on government’s response to the rise in Covid-19 infections
13 July 2020
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] notes the statement made by President Cyril Ramaphosa last night on the progress in the national effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
The President’s address took place when South Africa has the tenth highest numbers of infections in the world. As of last night, the country had 276 242 positive cases and 4079 mortalities. Just yesterday alone, 12 058 new positive cases were registered. These numbers necessitates that more stringent and effective plans to combat the spread of COVID-19 are put in place as a matter of urgency. In this regard, we welcome the decision to reintroduce the curfew and the immediate suspension of the sale and distribution of alcohol which has overburdened our healthcare system with trauma injuries resulting from alcohol consumption.
While the speech of the President mainly focused on creating awareness about the dangers of the virus including measures to mitigate the risk of transmissions. The national union believes that the speech failed to address the plight of frontline workers nor does it offer any tangible solutions to the struggles they are confronted with on a daily basis. Frontline workers continue to be recklessly exposed to the virus and they lose their lives on a daily basis while trying to fight this invisible enemy. With most of our healthcare facilities already overwhelmed with admissions of COVID-19 cases, the fight against the pandemic must be fought in all the hospitals and clinics across the country.
According to the statistics presented to parliament by the Minister of Health on the 8th July 2020; more than 4 821 frontline workers were reported to have been infected with the Covid-19 virus across the country. Nurses are the most affected with 2473 infections, followed by Community Healthcare Workers with 1971 infections and lastly, doctors with 377 infections. However, we strongly believe that these numbers might be slightly less because we know for a fact that many healthcare institutions hide the numbers of infected workers so as to not allow them to go on self-isolation and deplete staff numbers. As NEHAWU, we are worried that if the situation does not improve drastically very soon we will be facing a similar situation like in Italy where nearly 17 000 workers contracted the coronavirus.