Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane, the Premier of the Eastern Cape province said the provincial government is gearing up to curb the spread of COVID-19 infections in the province as the movement of the virus is expected with increased human movement during the upcoming Easter Weekend.
Mabuyane said Researchers from the Nelson Mandela University have warned that trouble is coming with the third wave.
What is worrying us in their analysis, is that they say the third wave might be driven by the Western Cape and spread to the rest of the country. The Easter Weekend therefore poses great risks to our province as people will be moving from the Western Cape to spend time with their families in our province,” said Mabuyane.
He said around the Easter Weekend (10th of April) last year the province had about 638 active cases and 35 deaths. By the 20th of May 2020, which was a month after the Easter Weekend of last year, we had 3282 active cases and sadly lost 285 people. During that time, we were on hard lockdown, but the virus spread like wildfire and most of the active cases we tried to manage were to a large extent a result of the movement of people during the Easter weekend,” he said.
Mabuyane said the province participated in the National Command Council processes and made inputs about what should be done in curbing the spread of COVID-19 infections during the Easter Weekend.
Unfortunately, we cannot close provincial boundaries to prevent our people from coming home. What we don t want to see is a free for all Easter weekend, which will leave families crying for lost loved ones after the Easter weekend. I make a humble plea to our older persons from 60 years of age up, to be vigilant, stay at home and not attend Passover church services because people in their age groups are at a higher risk with this virus. You will enjoy other Passover services when this virus is over. Please stay this one out, we still need you,” said Mabuyane.
He said the provincial government s health care system is ready to withstand the third wave with availability of medicines at hospitals, depots, available intensive care resources like oxygen, availability of PPE, EMS having added 98 brand new vehicles to the fleet last week, beds at all hospitals following completion of refurbishments of many hospitals by the provincial government.
We have also been working hard behind the scenes to improve our health systems to be ready for the third wave through training staff to deal better with cases and assisting service departments such as Home Affairs, Post Office to better manage risks caused by long queues,” he said.
Mabuyane said healthcare workers were the most critical asset of government in the fight against this pandemic and many of them had their contracts coming to an end today, 31 March 2021.
We have been working around the clock to find financial resources to extend the contracts of nurses and community healthcare workers in our province who have assisted us a great deal in our fight against the Covid-19 virus. I am glad to announce that we were able to source R400 million within our fiscus though under difficult circumstances as the fiscus is really strained, to extend the contracts of nurses and community healthcare workers effective on the 1st of April. The 8000 contracted frontline healthcare workers will support our vaccination programme and care for patients in the advent of a 3rd wave,” said Mabuyane.
He called on health care workers to understand that financial resources are strained in the entire country and that funding has been directed to other priority areas of development that are also needed by people including roads, water, electricity and education by students protesting to register in Institutions of Higher Learning.
