Drinkers have been threatened with fresh restrictions in South Africa after a lifting of a nine-week ban on alcohol sales led to hospitals dealing with more than 5,000 injuries linked to drunkenness in a single week.
The reopening of off-licences on June 1 ushered in a fresh wave of stabbings, road accidents and gunshot wounds, which have taken up dwindling beds, according to hospital reports nationwide.- 12/6/2020
South Africa
Scarcity of oxygen in some hospitals has led to fights between Covid-19 patients over dwindling supplies. Zweli Mkhize, the health minister, spoke of a “storm” of cases after the loosening of one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. Oxygen is low in hospitals in Johannesburg and Pretoria. In the Eastern Cape, the country’s most underdeveloped province, medical staff said the health system had collapsed.
“Many of the patients need oxygen, but there is not enough for everyone. Sick people are fighting each other. It is literally a ‘survival of the fittest’ situation,” a doctor told Rapport newspaper. The premiers of the country’s two main provinces, Gauteng and Western Cape, where the highest number of cases have been recorded, have both tested positive for Covid-19. Hospital beds in all provinces could be full within the month and field hospitals are being set up. President Ramaphosa is facing calls for a return to stricter lockdown measures. South Africa’s confirmed 238,339 cases account for half of all of Africa’s- 11/7/2020