Durban - When Mel Klute, a Pietermaritzburg image consultant and mom decided to pull together a video of honouring her healthcare worker friends on the frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic, she had no idea the response it would get.
A little more than one week after posting the video to her Facebook timeline telling how the coronavirus has hit their "small KZN town" and how ICU beds were at full capacity and paying tribute to the brave women who have sacrificed much to fight the pandemic, the two minute and 30 second video has been views over 200 000 times, generated more than 400 comments and shared more than 1000 times.
The video took off especially after it was featured on the Facebook page #ImStaying.
Since then she has been inundated with messages, has had calls for the video to be featured on national television and the participants in the video stopped in supermarkets and told how inspiring it has been.
Speaking to IOL on Thursday, Klute said she had never imagined in her wildest dreams that the video would go viral.
A little more than one week after posting the video to her Facebook timeline telling how the coronavirus has hit their "small KZN town", Mel Klute's video has been viewed over 200 000 times, generated more than 400 comments and shared more than 1000 times.
She said she had started asking her friends, many of whom are doctors and nurses in Pietermaritzburg to send her short videos on WhatsApp three months ago but only recently decided to pull it together and put it online.
"I knew that if I had put it up then it would not have had the impact it would as it has now," she said.
She said that although social media has been flooded with stories of people fighting the pandemic, of the horrors the pandemic has caused and the many deaths, she decided to do something to shine the spotlight on the women on the frontline.
"These women have sacrificed so much and not many people know how much they have, being on the frontline. I just felt like they needed to be honoured. There are so many doctors who have had to send their children to boarding schools so that they can help out our hospitals," she said.
Klute, who said that 90 per cent of the people in the video are friends were doing an amazing job in the community as Covid-19 infections in Pietermaritzburg were rapidly increasing.
She hoped that the video would help show people how serious the pandemic was, encourage them to do their part in curbing the virus and acknowledge the healthcare workers on the frontline.
"This video is not about me, it is about showcasing the brave women who are on the frontline making huge sacrifices to save people's lives. It is about saying thank you to all of them," she said.