The long-feared Covid-19 surge had arrived in South Africa, health minister Zweli Mkhize told members of parliament (MPs) on Wednesday, and warned that Gauteng and the Eastern Cape would run out of hospital beds to accommodate patients within four weeks.

"We have now reached the surge.... [T]he storm we have consistently warned South Africa about, has now arrived," Mkhize told a sitting of the National Assembly.

The minister added that with confirmed cases at 215 855 and fatalities at 3 502, the pandemic was touching the lives of all South Africans. 

The fatality rate from the coronavirus in South Africa is currently 1.6 percent.

"We are now at a point where it’s our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, close friends and comrades that are infected," he said.

"This pandemic that is attacking us globally, will cause some of us lifetime scars. It steals from us, from some lives, others jobs, others businesses. It spares no race, no gender or social class."

He said the latest modelling showed fewer expected infections than even the more optimistic scenarios reflected in earlier modelling exercises.

It meant that at the moment South Africa had adequate hospital beds for the number cases that required admission, but that facilities in all provinces would still be overrun, some sooner than others.

"Model projections indicate that while the epidemic is predicted to peak nationally at a similar time to the previously projected optimistic curve (that is mid-August), it does so at a lower level.... While the model projects a lower need for hospital (non-ICU) and ICU beds at a national level, bed capacity is still expected to be breached or overwhelmed in all provinces.

"Currently, planned hospital beds in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng are projected to be insufficient for combined non-ICU bed demand and the overflow from ICU once ICU capacity has been breached. 

"Bed capacity is expected to be breached in the next four weeks," he said.

Mkhize said the department of health's surge strategy, devised in anticipation of the peak in infections, had seen it repurpose 27 467 beds. This figure had been increased to 40 309 beds as the provinces started to experience a spike in the number of infections.

The Eastern Cape has been experiencing shortages, while in Gauteng, the provincial government cautioned that it would need roughly 8 000 beds as the infection numbers climb to a peak.

The Democratic Alliance's spokesperson on health, Siviwe Gwarube, said in reply to Mkhize's speech that he should place the Eastern Cape under administration as it was clearly overwhelmed by the increase in infections.

The province had 40 401 cases on Tuesday.

"You can begin by placing the Eastern Cape under administration according to section 100 of the Constitution. The Constitution makes it clear – where a provincial department cannot fulfil its core mandate, a section 100 intervention must be used," she said. 

"The premier of the province has admitted that they have lost the battle against this virus. Hospitals in the province have long reached the full capacity; healthcare workers are getting infected and those who are left to hold the fort do so at a great cost to their lives; people are fighting each other for mere oxygen in hospitals."

Mkhize said the health department was in the process of doing an audit of oxygen reticulation equipment in all hospitals, and was focusing as a priority on the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

"The outcome of these audits will give us a sense of the amount of work that needs to be done to address the gaps that undermine the expanded supply of oxygen to patients."