Port Elizabeth field hospital still not open

Eastern Cape Department of Health role-players were locked in meetings on Tuesday night after a week went by without authorities being able to open the 1,485-bed field hospital in Nelson Mandela Bay.

An old vehicle manufacturing plant was converted to a hospital in just seven weeks in a joint project between Volkswagen South Africa, the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber and the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, with additional digital systems support provided by the Nelson Mandela University.

The facility was handed over to the Eastern Cape Department of Health last week. Since then, bed capacity in the metro’s hospitals, both private and public, has been reduced to almost none as patients seek help for Covid-19.

A few hundred of the field hospital’s beds are equipped to provide oxygen to patients. As of Tuesday 30 June, the Nelson Mandela Bay metro had 7,174 cases of Covid-19 and 119 deaths from the coronavirus.

Hospitals were full at the weekend. Premier Oscar Mabuyane admitted that the province’s health system was “overwhelmed” by the pandemic.

On Tuesday 30 June, during a briefing of the joint operations committee for the Eastern Cape, Mabuyane said the Rev. Dr Mamisa Chabula-Nxiweni field hospital “will give us 1,485 beds soon, and 3,300 beds when completed”.

The department’s deputy director-general for clinical services, Dr Litha Matiwane, did not respond to questions about an opening date. Health spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said “it was a work in progress”. The head of the infectious disease department at Livingstone Hospital, Dr John Black, confirmed that the hospital was not open yet.

An advertisement for 314 posts at the field hospital was published on Friday 26 June, with the closing date of Friday 3 July. The bulk of the vacancies are for nurses and nursing assistants, while several are for doctors, radiographers, pharmacists and operational managers.