After fighting the virus for a year, healthcare workers in South Africa are breathing a cautious relief as cases across the country fall. Although they have reason to celebrate, medical staff are worried about a likely imminent wave of infections in the coming months.
“We are relieved now because the number is down and the patients are no longer so sick,” nurse Constance Mathibela told Agence France-Presse (AFP) at Thembisa Hospital, in a township east of Johannesburg.
After the epidemic struck, the hospital was “almost full every day,” she recalls.
“There was no time when we had an empty (Covid) department. It was just a continuous (flow of) things.”
South Africa recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 5 last year.
It has since gone through two virus storms and registered over 1.5 million cases and more than 50,000 deaths – the highest in all of Africa.
Last month, the country reopened its major land borders with neighboring countries after closing them the previous month to limit the spread of the virus.
But on Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared that the second wave, driven by a new, more contagious variant, was now over.
The nationwide number of daily new infections fell to just over 500 this week after peaking at more than 21,000 on 7 January.
Ramaphosa’s announcement was welcome news for many medical workers who have been driven to the brink of burnout.
But with a vaccination drive just starting last month, they are also supporting a possible third wave.
Researchers believe that it may land with the onset of winter in the southern hemisphere, around May or June.
‘Very scary’
Workers at Thembisa – the public hospital in a district that is alternatively spelled Tembisa – relived the rising waves of the previous waves.
“In the beginning, it was very scary because we did not know Covid at all,” says Mathibela, the first nurse to work in a COVID-19 ward at the hospital.
Another senior nurse, Salome Nkoana, said that during the first days, frontline workers struggled to care for patients suffering from an unknown infection, while fearing that they too could become ill.
“Every day when I went home I prayed …” God, can you please help me go through this? “
“Now I’m exhausted, I need time off,” said the nurse, wearing a blue scrub, as she went through the patient’s notes.
One of the least documented aspects of the epidemic is the psychological toll imposed on health workers when they saw patients struggle with the disease and disappear.
“We were so depressed, all of us,” Nkoana said, recalling a horrible day when five patients died.
“Emotionally, it stressed us out a lot,” said Phuti Kobo, 39, another department head. “One death (alone) is enough to traumatize nurses.”
“If you had more than five in one day, it was a real trauma, but we succeeded through everything.”
Now “the wards are much quieter … no more ventilated patients”, she added happily.
In the male ward, a COVID-19 patient wearing striped hospital pajamas was lying on a bed listening to music on his headphones – a therapy for anxiety while undergoing treatment.
AFP was granted access to the hospital after several requests prior to a de facto media cover-up of healthcare institutions during the pandemic.
Fear of the third wave
The daily number of COVID-19 admissions in Thembisa has decreased by about 80% from the top early this year, from about 100 to about 20.
But the release can only be temporary.
“We just imagine how bad it will be, how bad it will be,” says Kobo.
“Will it be the same as the first or second wave or will it get worse?”
On the plus side, the enemy is much better known today than a year ago.
The hospital’s clinical director, Dr Sasiwe Mbeleki, said that planning was already underway for a possible new increase in cases.
“We will be much wiser as we approach the third wave,” Kobo said. “We are ready.”
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