By Mzwandile Funani
Unable to breathe, 84-year-old Barry Gatenby was turned away from three private Port Elizabeth hospitals as an ambulance crew desperately tried to find space for the Covid-19 patient.
At the same time, his worried family waited anxiously on Sunday morning as the crew updated them on the struggle for space.
Finally, Gatenby was booked in at the VW field hospital.
For the family who recently lost their mother after a fall, the wait felt eternal.
Gatenby is just one of more than 6,000 people in Nelson Mandela Bay battling Covid-19.
Hospitals, both private and public, are being stretched to the limit as cases increase daily.
The figures as of Sunday stood at 6,285, according to Eastern Cape health department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo.
The rise in cases in the Bay has been attributed to people not following protocols, like social distancing and washing their hands, to avoid Covid-19, as well as irresponsible partying.
The state hospitals are also turning patients away, with a doctor describing the situation as harrowing.
The doctor, who is part of Livingstone’s Covid-19 team, said the hospital had run out of beds, with just two oxygen points available on Monday.
The two points opened up on Monday after patients in need of oxygen were turned away at the weekend.
“This is not just a mini-spike, we are in a second surge.
“And, at this point, it does not matter if you have medical aid or not, bed pressures are tremendous both in private and public hospitals.
The hospital has got to a point of having to turn people away, and it’s mostly people who need oxygen that we’ve had to divert to other hospitals because we can’t process them when there are no oxygen points.
Whenever we manage to move people, the oxygen points that open up are taken again very quickly,” the doctor said.
The lack of beds is exacerbated by a shortage of staff.
“It’s very difficult and extremely stressful.
“Our junior staff have to deal with a lot of deaths and we don’t have adequate support staff to phone and counsel families, we don’t have fresh legs to take over [from exhausted staff].”
The doctor, who did not want to be named as public sector doctors are not permitted to speak to the media, said the surge in Covid-19 cases was affecting all services.
For the Gatenby family, still going through the pain of losing their mother, concerns over a lack of bed for their father had been distressing, his son, Mike, said.
An ambulance was deployed at 5am to fetch Gatenby at his Lorraine residence and he was initially taken to Greenacres Hospital.
While in the ambulance, his oxygen level dropped below 50%.
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