Rising coronavirus cases, limited staff take South Africa’s hospitals to brink of collapse

At the Retreat Community Health Centre in Cape Town, most patients who present with COVID-19 have mild symptoms.

Clinicians on duty offer them paracetamol and send them home.

But over the past few weeks, a growing number of people have come to the clinic struggling to breathe.

“What they need is oxygen and they need it quickly,” senior medical officer Andrea Mendelsohn said.

The clinic currently has 10 oxygen canisters, and five or six people every day rely on them to breathe.

With the number of COVID…