Update on the coronavirus by Premier Alan Winde

5 June 2020

As of 1pm on 5 June, the Western Cape has 10965 active cases of COVID-19, with a total of  28 082 confirmed cases and 16 433 recoveries.

Sub Districts Cape Town Metro:

Sub-districts:

Unallocated: 1753 (558 recovered)

More data, including updated suburb level data as at June 1, is available here: https://coronavirus.westerncape.gov.za/covid-19-dashboard

The Western Cape has recorded an additional 41 COVID-19 deaths-bringing the total number of deaths from the virus in the province to 684. We send our condolences to their loved ones at this time.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is received by Premier Alan Winde at the CTICC. Photo by GCIS

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the Western Cape:

President Cyril Ramaphosa, together with national Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize and other members of the national cabinet, visited the Western Cape today. Premier Alan Winde presented our whole of government readiness plans to deal with Covid-19. President Ramaphosa also opened the 862 bed Hospital of Hope at the CTICC, which the Western Cape government has brought on stream to ensure medical care for residents is available at the peak of the Covid-19 epidemic in our province.

Our teams have worked around the clock to ensure that this facility was ready in a matter of weeks. On Monday, it will start to take in its first patients. We have named it the Hospital of Hope, because it is aimed at being a place where people come to be cared for, to recover and to go home at the end of their treatment.

During the presentations to the President, we outlined the work the province has completed to date to create additional healthcare capacity to ensure we are adequately prepared. Our current plans for additional beds will create over 1400 beds in the province, and the potential CTICC 2 project, which is currently in discussions, could bring online 800 or more beds. President Ramaphosa has indicated that he would like to see even more beds in the province, and we will work with him and his team in order to determine the best way to source and fund these beds as well as the staff that will be required to care for the patients in those beds.

Our presentation to the President focused on three challenges and risks the province currently faces. The first of these is testing capacity which has been constrained by the lack of testing kits and reagents and has resulted in us having to implement a risk adjusted approach in the metro. The province is also looking to private labs, university labs and rapid serology test kits to help address this issue.

President Ramaphosa indicated that a new platform is being investigated which will enable countries across Africa to access millions of test kits. We look forward to the speedy resolution of this issue and thank the President for hearing our concerns in this regard in recent weeks.

The Western Cape will continue with its risk adjusted strategy until such time as testing is no longer constrained. Under this strategy, only those falling into our risk groups including healthcare workers, those in hospital, people aged over 55, and those under 55 with comorbidities, will be tested in the metro region. This will however require those who are not being tested, and who are experiencing symptoms to take quarantine and isolation very seriously. Those who are not able to do so, will be guided by our teams to ensure they are able to safely quarantine or isolate.

The second challenge the province faces is the recruitment of health care staff for our facilities and for the additional beds brought online. The Western Cape Government is able to source a total of 1477 healthcare workers- however, in order to meet all the staffing requirements for the potential CTICC 2 and to make up the shortfall created by absenteeism in the system, the Western Cape would require an additional 5272 healthcare workers- with the biggest demand being for nurses.

The third challenge we raised with the President was around funding. The Western Cape Government has projected that it needs over R 3 billion in the current year to respond to COVID-19 in the Departments of Health and Transport and Public Works alone.

We were very pleased by President Ramaphosa’s commitment to “pull out all the stops to save lives”. He indicated that in the war against COVID-19, saving lives must take precedence over costs, and committed to working with us to identify and source additional staff members. He also indicated that funding would be made available which will help us to secure the beds, staff and supplies needed to continue to provide the necessary facilities and care to those who need medical attention.

We also had an opportunity today to display some of the innovative work being done in the province to combat COVID-19. Our IT teams have developed a new nurse calling system in the CTICC, which will also be an entirely paperless facility.

We were also able to showcase our Red Dot transport system which forms part of our targeted hotspot plan. This service is a partnership with the taxi industry, under which 100 taxis, marked by a red dot, provide sanitized transport services to our healthcare workers. These taxis only carry 50% capacity and have strict hygiene and mask wearing rules in place. President Ramaphosa was able to hear from both a healthcare worker and one of the taxi operators today how the system works, and how it has impacted them personally.

Issued by Western Cape Office of the Premier, 5 June 2020