Cape Town - With over 1 700 patients who have tested positive for Covid-19 in hospitals in the Western Cape, this is the highest number of hospitalisations to date, said Premier Alan Winde on Thursday.
The premier explained that hospitalised Covid-19 patients include both public and private facilities, and of this total, more than 300 people are in ICU or high-care facilities in these hospitals.
"This is the highest number of Covid-19 hospitalisations to date, and we are anticipating and planning for a further increase in demand in our services.
"The additional capacity provided for by the Hospital of Hope at the CTICC has already provided significant support, recording 230 admissions by 24 June. 176 people have been discharged from this field hospital to date," Winde said.
Winde explained that the province's healthcare system planning and provisioning is guided by modelling, which is done in conjunction with the National Covid-19 Epi Model consortium. He said that this is the same model used by the National Government.
As guided by the modelling the province is also preparing against a range of possible scenarios the premier said, "including those which anticipate limited mitigation of the epidemic".
"We believe it would be irresponsible to plan for an optimistic scenario, and we are then not able to provide services to those who need it.
"However, I must stress that modelling is never perfect. It is based on a number of assumptions on how the virus might spread through our communities, and who might get infected."
As a result, Winde explained that the Western Cape government therefore needs to continuously re-assess the model by putting in new data from what is happening 'on the ground'.
"We currently cannot be certain whether we have started approaching our peak or whether it has been pushed out, and we are therefore undertaking an additional calibration of the model using the latest data and trends. We will make this new calibration public as soon as it is completed," he said.