COVID-19 hits KwaDukuza hospital
KwaZulu-Natal's Health Department has confirmed it's immediately stopped taking in new patients at the General Justice Gizenga Mpanza Regional Hospital, formerly the Stanger Hospital, after 16 people including four doctors and a nurse tested positive for coronavirus.
Others that have been infected during the outbreak are nine mothers and two babies.
Health MEC, Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu says the first known COVID–19 case involved a woman who did not disclose that her husband had tested positive for the virus.
It is understood that the woman's husband tested positive after an outbreak of the respiratory disease at a supermarket in Ballito.
Simelane-Zulu says the woman was housed at a border mother's lodge at the hospital and not so long after, other mothers soon contracted the virus.
The department says that all confirmed patients have since been isolated and all protocols for tracing and testing contacts are underway.
All staff and patients in the surgical ward and ICU have been tested.
The remaining staff and patients will be tested today. Decontamination procedures have also begun.
In a statement, the health department says that the hospital, which houses 219 patients, has effectively been turned into a quarantine site.
Simelane-Zulu says they are concerned about how the infections took place even with the Infection Prevention and Control measures in place at the hospital.
She says they have instituted an urgent investigation to establish how the virus was able to spread so rapidly.
