S Africa to prepare 1,644 field hospitals to fight COVID-19

South Africa is preparing 1,644 emergency field hospitals and quarantine sites to combat the increasing number of COVID-19 infections in the country.

In Johannesburg, the commercial city of the country, 2,000 beds for quarantine patients are being set up at the Nasrec centre.

Each April, Nascrec has been the venue for over a century of South Africa's largest annual consumer trade fair, the Rand Show, which was cancelled this year due to the national lockdown to contain the spread of the deadly virus.

Nasrec is just one of the public venues which will be converted into field hospitals. Some will be built from scratch.

In some provinces, marquees will be erected as temporary measures.

The government initiative is aimed at addressing the dire shortage of health facilities in the country to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

It will supplement the current total capacity at both state and private healthcare facilities of just over 3,300 intensive care beds and around the same number of ventilators.

Current projections are that between 4,100 and 14,700 beds may be required depending on how current initiatives for deploying massive home testing, self-isolation and quarantine pan out.

Latest figures show that there are 3,158 confirmed infections, 903 recoveries and 54 deaths resulting from the pandemic.