Coronavirus in South Africa: controversy between government and nurses

Text by: Noé Hochet-Bodin Follow

The coronavirus is settling down a little more in South Africa. Four new patients tested positive on Monday, March 9, bringing the total number of cases in the country to seven. The government nevertheless wants to be reassuring.

Publicity

From our correspondent in Johannesburg,

In South Africa, the seven people who tested positive for coronavirus returned from the same trip to Italy. As a result, several dozen people were then placed in quarantine to try to stop the bleeding. Schools, too, have started to close as a precaution. The Minister of Health, however, called for calm and ensures that everything is under control.

In his daily press point, Zweli Mkhize, tried to reassure, for example, about the state of preparation of South African hospitals. " Some say we don't have enough nurses, not enough doctors and that our hospitals are dilapidated, " he said. It is true, but these are the daily problems that we have been trying to solve for a long time. The coronavirus is different. It's an emergency. We are ready to face it ”.

Disasters

This awkward, even contradictory speech, cringes among specialists in the sector. " Front line hospital practitioners have not been sufficiently informed or trained about this virus ," warns Lerato Madumo-Gova, president of the Ynitu nursing union . Also, all of the designated hospitals have experienced various disasters recently. Some even failed to contain simple pneumonia . ”

For the time being, suspect patients from the Johannesburg region are, for example, placed in the cancer service and not in their dedicated service, which is still under construction. " It makes you think about the risks that we take to hospital practitioners, but also to other patients with weak immune systems, in our hospitals, " added the president of the nursing union Ynitu.

For the more affluent, a private exam was set up this Monday, March 9. We can now be tested for just under a hundred euros.

Our selection on SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus

• An infographic: The coronavirus in 7 points
• Decryption: From the epidemic to the pandemic? The coronavirus in seven questions
• Practical questions:
→ Who are the vulnerable people?
→ What should you do when you think you are contaminated?
→ Quarantine, what are we talking about?
→ What treatments?

Find all our articles, reports, chronicles and programs on the coronavirus by clicking here .

► Read also: Coronavirus: South Africa repatriates 150 of its citizens from China

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• South Africa
• Coronavirus
• Health and Medicine

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