As South Africa continues to focus on ploughing health, financial and human resources into the national response against the Covid-19 coronavirus, there is collateral damage in hospitals.
The pandemic has disrupted routine hospital services globally, and a new study estimates that 146 000 elective surgeries in this country could be cancelled as a result of the crisis – leading to patients facing a lengthy wait for their health issues to be resolved.
Worldwide, the CovidSurg Collaborative, a research network of 5 000 surgeons from 120 countries, has projected that based on a 12-week period of peak distribution to hospital services due to Covid-19, 28.4 million elective surgeries will be cancelled or postponed this year.