‘The infrastructure can’t cope’: South African healthcare workers struggle to deal with third wave
Dr Angelique Coetzee is a GP in the South African capital Pretoria, where she has run a family clinic for the past 33 years.
But she has never known anything like COVID-19.
She said: “If you have never been in such a situation, you can’t imagine what it is like. We’ve been dealing with 30 or 40 positive cases every day. The pressure is extreme.
“If you look at a country like Australia where they have a few cases, well I would see their national caseload in a couple of days. Can you imagine?”
When we first spoke in June, Dr Coetzee seemed on the verge of tears.
She said: “If I speak to you now, that means someone with COVID will not been seen – and there is no point trying to message. I don’t have time to answer.”
Dr Angelique Coetzee is a GP in the South African capital Pretoria
South Africa has found itself in the grips of a Delta variant-driven “third wave” of infection.
The caseload has been brutal, outstripping the first two waves by a factor of three.
The country’s acting health minister says this surge has now peaked in the province of Gauteng, where the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg are situated but Dr Coetzee says her personal and professional burden has barely changed.
She said: “We have been seeing fewer patients on a daily basis this week but the weather is colder and COVID-19 patients are turning up with pneumonia so we are seeing sicker patients than we have been during the last three or four weeks.”
South Africa’s beleaguered public-run health system has struggled to cope with wave after wave of the virus.
Lacking sufficient beds and qualified staff, city hospitals used casualty departments as holding centres where patients wait for space to free up – sometimes for days.
South Africa’s healthcare system has been struggling with staff shortages during the pandemic
“This is the third wave we have experienced, comes less than six months (after the second) and the infrastructure can’t cope,” said Dr Coetzee.
“Most patients need oxygen and I try to admit them to hospital but because of (capacity) problems I have had to treat them at home. We have been waiting for 24 to 48 hours before we could get them cylinders, dealing with the stress of trying to manage patients without oxygen with the knowledge that if we don’t make a plan they are going to die. All this while the surgery is full, full, full. It is so very stressful.”
The extreme working patterns and the mental pressures that come with it have been felt in unexpected ways.
“I have had colleagues who have had motor vehicle accidents. One was so tired after work that he drove his car into a tree,” she said.
“The second one was hit at a crossroads – and a lady doctor reversed into a garage door because she had forgotten to open it. The most bizarre things that happen in a short space of time but it shows you the pressure they are under.”
Community groups have been running ad-hoc clinics in South Africa during the pandemic
Dr Coetzee has been operating on the very edge within a healthcare system that was been put under severe strain.
There are no support workers or home visits or specialist consultations for most people in South Africa.
Instead, GP’s like Dr Coetzee try to do it all.
“You become distant after a while but you try to carry on and on. I think that is the only way to survive it,” she said.
Yanga Booi is a 32-year-old nurse working at the intensive care unit at Thelle Mogoerane Regional Hospital in Vosloorus, on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
He says the hospital is poorly equipped and the staff have been insufficiently prepared during the pandemic.
He said: “The health system in South Africa did a complete spin when the pandemic hit our shores. We were put in the spotlight and given this false sense of heroism, but it wasn’t the right sort of attention because when we went to work, the hospital was in a worse state that than it was before.
“We were ill-prepared from the beginning, and we are still not prepared.”
The third wave has come as rioting and looting has taken place across the country
The hospital in Vosloorus provides beds and treatment but Booi says COVID testing at the facility is not reliable and patients are not properly isolated.
“We cannot be sure who has COVID because we get so many false negatives. It’s like we wait for people to get sick or drop dead, then look into the COVID thing,” he said.
“I remember admitting a patient who was negative on admission and so we didn’t isolate him. A few days later he died and we found out that he was positive.
“It’s a sad situation because the hospital does not have an isolated ICU ward for COVID patients. It’s a general ICU with isolation rooms and we admit COVID patients to it – some people have it and others don’t. We cannot be sure.”
Mr Booi says dozens of his colleagues have paid a terrible price over the course of three separate waves of infection in South Africa.
He said: “It is unfortunate that we have had to watch our colleagues dying from this… countless members of staff have gone, it’s not just nurses, it’s the doctors, it’s the clerks, it’s the porters.”
The 32-year old, who took up the profession when he was offered a government bursary, says he was “deeply afraid” when the pandemic arrived.
Yet 17 months later he has noticed a change in himself and others.
Yanga Booi said the country was ill-prepared for the pandemic
He said: “The loss of life has caused us to grow a thick skin, just like when we came into the profession. Our first experiences with death were terrifying but then we got accustomed to people dying and that is what has happened with COVID.
“We are used to the virus we know it is here to stay and we must find ways to keep going.”
Dr Shabir Mahdi is dean of the faculty of health sciences at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg and is a source of expertise and fearless criticism in a country that has struggled in all aspects of its pandemic response.
Dr Mahdi says the ferocity of South Africa’s third wave of infection came as a “huge surprise”.
He said: “The current resurgence far exceeds what we have experienced either in the first or second wave in the number of documented cases. In fact, the numbers of new cases diagnosed on a daily basis is three times what it was at the time of the peak of the first and second wave.”
Dr Shabir Mahdi said the third wave in the country came as a ‘huge surprise’
However, this eminent viriologist is unsparing in his criticism of the government’s response.
While the magnitude of the Delta-fuelled third instalment could not have been predicted, he says health officials knew another wave was coming at the beginning of South Africa’s winter season.
He said: “In a province like Gauteng where 25% of the population live, our hospitals are completely overwhelmed but at the same time, we have beds that are literally vacant in the same hospitals and we can’t actually use those beds because some official in some government department forgot that you actually need to have health care workers available to actually staff those beds.”
An audacious Ukrainian drone attack against multiple airbases across Russia is a humiliating security breach for Vladimir Putin that will doubtless trigger a furious response.
Pro-Kremlin bloggers have described the drone assault – which Ukrainian security sources said hit more than 40 Russian warplanes – as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor” in reference to the Japanese attack against the US in 1941 that prompted Washington to enter the Second World War.
Ukraine war latest: Russia accuses Kyiv of ‘terrorist attack’
The Ukrainian operation – which used small drones smuggled into Russia, hidden in mobile sheds and launched off the back of trucks – also demonstrated how technology and imagination have transformed the battlefield, enabling Ukraine to seriously hurt its far more powerful opponent.
Moscow will have to retaliate, with speculation already appearing online about whether President Putin will again threaten the use of nuclear weapons.
“We hope that the response will be the same as the US response to the attack on their Pearl Harbor or even harsher,” military blogger Roman Alekhin wrote on his Telegram channel.
Codenamed ‘Spider’s Web’, the mission on Sunday was the culmination of one and a half years of planning, according to a security source.
In that time, Ukraine’s secret service smuggled first-person view (FPV) drones into Russia, sources with knowledge of the operation said.
Flat-pack, garden-office style sheds were also secretly transported into the country.
The drones were hidden in truck containers. Pic: SBU Security Service
The oblong sheds were then built and drones were hidden inside, before the containers were put on the back of trucks and driven to within range of their respective targets.
At a chosen time, doors on the roofs of the huts were opened remotely and the drones were flown out. Each was armed with a bomb that was flown into the airfields, with videos released by the security service that purportedly showed them blasting into Russian aircraft.
These drones were used to destroy Russian bomber aircraft. Pic: SBU Security Service
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Among the targets were Tu-95 and Tu-22 bomber aircraft that can launch cruise missiles, according to the Ukrainian side. An A-50 airborne early warning aircraft was also allegedly hit. This is a valuable platform that is used to command and control operations.
The use of such simple technology to destroy multi-million-pound aircraft will be watched with concern by governments around the world.
Suddenly, every single military base, airfield and warship will appear that little bit more vulnerable if any truck nearby could be loaded with killer drones.
Read more:
Russia investigates bridge collapses
What new Stalin statue says about Putin’s regime
The most immediate focus, though, will be on how Mr Putin responds.
Previous attacks by Ukraine inside Russia have triggered retaliatory strikes and increasingly threatening rhetoric from the Kremlin.
But this latest operation is one of the biggest and most significant, and comes on the eve of a new round of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv that are meant to take place in Turkey. It is not clear if that will still happen.
US President Donald Trump has been pushing for the two sides to make peace but Russia has only escalated its war.
Ukraine clearly felt it had nothing to lose but to also go on the attack.
World
Eight injured in petrol bomb and ‘flamethrower’ attack at rally for Hamas-held hostages in Colorado
Eight people have been injured at a US rally for Israeli hostages after they were attacked by a man with a makeshift flamethrower and petrol bombs.
A group of people in Boulder, Colorado, were holding a regular demonstration to raise awareness of Hamas-held hostages in Gaza when they were allegedly targeted by a man who shouted “Free Palestine” on Sunday. The suspect was arrested at the scene.
Four women and four men aged between 52 and 88 were injured and transported to hospitals, Boulder police said.
The force said the injuries ranged from “very serious” to “more minor”.
Some of the victims were airlifted to hospital.
Authorities had earlier put the count of the injured at six and said at least one of them was in a critical condition.
Mohamed Soliman, 45, was holding several bottles
The FBI says the attack was a targeted “act of terrorism” and named the suspect as 45-year-old Mohamed Soliman from El Paso County, Colorado.
He was also taken to hospital after the alleged attack.
Eyewitnesses said the suspect threw Molotov cocktails, an improvised bomb made from a bottle filled with petrol and stuffed with a piece of cloth to use as a fuse, into people attending the demonstration.
He also used a “makeshift flamethrower” during the attack, according to Mark Michalek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver field office.
Two senior law enforcement officials told Sky News’ US partner network that Soliman is an Egyptian national who seemingly acted alone. They said he has no previous significant contact with law enforcement.
The ground appeared burned as the man was detained
People doused one of the victims with water as police arrested the suspect
The White House described the suspect as an “illegal alien” who had received a work permit under the Biden administration despite overstaying a tourist visa.
A large part of downtown Boulder was cordoned off as sniffer dogs and the bomb squad searched for potential devices.
Police chief Steve Redfearn said the attack happened around 1.26pm on Sunday and that initial reports were that “people were being set on fire”.
Phone footage showed smoke rising from a distance
“When we arrived we encountered multiple victims that were injured, with injuries consistent with burns,” Mr Redfearn told the media.
The police chief also said he did not believe anyone else was involved.
“We’re fairly confident we have the lone suspect in custody,” he said.
The suspect is detained in Colorado. Pic: Reuters
Boulder’s police chief said the attack happened as a “group of pro-Israel people” were peacefully demonstrating.
The walk is held regularly by a volunteer group called Run For Their Lives, which aims to raise awareness of the hostages who remain in Gaza.
Video from the scene showed a bare-chested man shouting and clutching two bottles after the attack.
Other footage showed him being held down and arrested by police as people doused one of the victims with water.
Nearby there appears to be a large black burn mark on the ground.
Law enforcement used armoured suits as they searched for bombs. Pic: AP
Brooke Coffman, a 19-year-old student, described seeing four women on the ground with burns on their legs. She said one appeared badly burned on most of her body and had been wrapped in a flag.
She described seeing a man whom she presumed to be the attacker standing in the courtyard shirtless, holding a glass
bottle of clear liquid and shouting.
“Everybody is yelling, ‘get water, get water,'” Ms Coffman said.
Lady on fire ‘from head to toe’
Another eyewitness, who did not give his name, said: “It was very strange to just hear a crash on the ground of a bottle breaking and then it sounded like a boom and then people started yelling and screaming.
“But I saw fire, I saw people screaming and crying and tripping and I saw the attacker – he had three Molotov cocktails.
“One of them he threw inside a group and one lady lit on fire from head to toe and then the other four people were also injured in the fire, but not as bad as the first one.”
A bomb disposal robot and sniffer dogs were also at the scene. Pic: AP
The eyewitness continued: “The attacker came out from the bushes and the trees… he threw another cocktail, and on the second one he lit himself on fire – I imagine accidentally.
“He seemed to have a bullet proof vest on, or some kind of vest, and then a shirt underneath it.
“And after he lit himself on fire he took off the vest and the shirt and he was shirtless.
“But he still had his Molotov cocktails in his hands ready to use them… ready to throw them and explode them on people.”
Lynn Segal, another eyewitness, said: “These shoots of fire, linear, about 20 feet long, spears of fire, two of them at least, came across right into the group, about 15 feet from me.”
The 72-year-old said two neighbours of hers, a husband and wife in their 80s, were at the demonstration. She added that the wife was one of the victims and appeared to be the most seriously injured.
“They’re both elders in their 80s, and you can’t take something like this assault to your body as easily as someone younger.”
Pic: AP
Ms Segal, who was wearing a “Free Palestine” T-shirt, said she watches the demonstrations to “try and listen” to what the volunteers are “talking about” because she is concerned about the hostages.
She added that she is concerned the attack will “divide this community”.
Another eyewitness told MSNBC that he saw the suspect “lighting people on fire while spraying gasoline on them”.
Brian, who is himself Jewish and asked that his last name not be made public, added that he saw victims “having their skin melt off their bodies”.
A statement from Boulder’s Jewish community said “an incendiary device was thrown at walkers at the Run for Their Lives walk on Pearl Street as they were raising awareness for the hostages still held in Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement this morning: “This attack was aimed against peaceful people who wished to express their solidarity with the hostages held by Hamas, simply because they were Jews.
“I trust the United States authorities to prosecute the cold blood perpetrator to the fullest extent of the law and do everything possible to prevent future attacks against innocent civilians.
“The antisemitic attacks around the world are a direct result of blood libels against the Jewish state and people, and this must be stopped.”
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a prominent Jewish Democrat , said it was an antisemitic attack.
“This is horrifying, and this cannot continue. We must stand up to antisemitism,” he said on X.
A man pinned a sticker of the Israeli flag to a post near the scene. Pic: Reuters
Boulder is a university city of about 105,000 people on the northwest edge of Denver, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
The attack follows the arrest of a Chicago-born man in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington DC two weeks ago.
Read more from Sky News:
Zelenskyy says airbase strikes will go ‘in history books’
IDF issues denial after reports at least 31 people killed
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Tensions are simmering in the US over Israel’s war in Gaza.
There has been an increase in antisemitic hate crime, as well as moves by some supporters of Israel to brand pro-Palestinian protests as antisemitic.
President Trump’s administration has detained protesters without charge and pulled funding from elite universities that have permitted such demonstrations.
Conservative historian Karol Nawrocki, who draws inspiration from Donald Trump, has won Poland’s presidential election.
Mr Nawrocki secured 50.89% of votes while his opponent, Liberal pro-EU candidate Rafal Trzaskowski, took 49.11%.
Earlier, an exit poll called the result the other way around – with both men declaring victory.
Mr Nawrocki had positioned himself as a defender of traditional Polish values, aligning himself with US conservatives, including Mr Trump, and showing scepticism towards the EU.
Rafal Trzaskowski in Warsaw after the exit poll announcement. Pic: Reuters
Meanwhile, Mr Trzaskowski, 53, had promised to ease abortion restrictions, introduce civil partnerships for LGBT couples and promote constructive ties with European partners.
The vote has been closely watched in neighbouring Ukraine as well as in Russia, the European Union and the United States – with the election being framed as Poland choosing between more liberal norms or a more nationalist path.
Karol Nawrocki addresses his supporters. Pic: AP
This runoff follows a tightly-contested first round of voting in May, which saw Mr Trzaskowski win just over 31% and Mr Nawrocki nearly 30%, eliminating 11 other candidates.
Mr Nawrocki won the vote despite discussions about his past dominating the last days of the campaign – from questions over his acquisition of a flat from a pensioner to an admission that he took part in orchestrated brawls.
“Everything was on a knife edge,” said 32-year-old IT specialist Patryk Marek. “Feelings are for sure mixed for this moment. But how small this margin was, it tells us how divided we are almost in half as voters.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Outgoing Polish President Andrzej Duda spoke to Sky News earlier this year
Read more from Sky News:
Ukraine in ‘large-scale operation’ to destroy Russian bombers
Two dead and hundreds of arrests after PSG win
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Poland’s new president will have significant influence over whether the country’s centrist government can fulfil its agenda, given the presidential power to veto laws.
Led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the government had struggled to pass legislation with Poland’s previous president in power and may find the same is true once Mr Nawrocki is sworn in.
Like his predecessor, Mr Nawrocki is expected to block any attempts by the government to liberalise abortion or reform the judiciary.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was convinced the EU could continue its “very good cooperation” with Poland.
“We are all stronger together in our community of peace, democracy, and values. So let us work to ensure the security and prosperity of our common home,” she said.
There has been some discussion about whether a win for Mr Nawrocki could lead to fresh elections in Poland.
Jacek Sasin, a politician for the opposition Law and Justice party, said: “The referendum on the dismissal of the Tusk government has been won.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway