The Eastern Cape government has earmarked 34 health facilities which will be refurbished to beef up the province's fight against Covid-19.
On Tuesday, Premier Oscar Mabuyane, announced that 42 contracts, worth R222.8 million had been awarded to Eastern Cape-based contractors for refurbishment for healthcare facilities across the province.
"These projects are currently at various stages of implementation with 20 projects having already been completed, 12 projects planned to be completed at the end of July 2020, with the completion of the remaining 10 projects earmarked for the end of August 2020. Approximately 500 work opportunities have been created thus far and this number will increase as more work is being done," he said.
He said that the first phase of the first field hospital, the
Rev. Dr Mamisa Chabula-Nxiweni field hospital has been opened.
"This will give us 1 485 beds
soon, and 3300 beds when completed. To ensure that we are prepared for the
surge of patients with Covid-19 infections, we are in the process of building one field
hospital per district and metropolitan municipal areas of our province with 500
beds per field hospital. This will give us a combined total of 4000 medical beds
throughout the province. These are not normal beds. These are medical beds
with all required medical resources and high care medical equipment to save
lives," he said.
The EC health department has also recruited an additional 1000 nurses and over 5000 Community
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Health Workers in the province as part of the Covid-19 response team