JOHANNESBURG: While Michelle Cerfontyne was completing her medical training last year, the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed South Africa’s understaffed public hospitals, so the young doctor thought she would get a job easily.
But when she started applying for posts prospectively in September, there seemed to be no vacancies.
Since then, a second wave of the coronavirus in Africa’s most industrialised country has far outstripped the first, hitting 20,000 daily cases earlier this month and bringing hospitals closer to breaking point.
Yet Cerfontyne’s 10 job applications have all been rejected. Nine did not give her an interview.
Cerfontyne is one of scores of newly-qualified junior doctors and hundreds of other medical staff unable to find placements, despite staff shortages in a pandemic that has killed more than 40,000 people, the highest toll in Africa.
“I’m not used to sitting … doing nothing,” she said. “The fact that there’s a global pandemic and I’m just…