Matron Annamarie Odendaal has cancelled all staff holiday on the Covid-19 ward at the private Arwyp Medical Centre in Johannesburg as a second wave of the coronavirus threatens to overwhelm South Africa’s health system.

“I called them back because we are in a peak period now, so it’s not easy for the staff because they also want to go back to their family members,” she told Reuters on the ward on Christmas Day.

“Sometimes they are tired but they never say ‘I can’t come to work’. The patient is really always first for them.”

A confluence of school holidays, public laxity and a new, potentially more infectious variant of the virus has left authorities scrambling to counter an earlier-than-expected resurgence of infections that saw new daily cases spike nearly seven-fold from a month ago to top 14,305 on Dec. 24.

South Africa has recorded 25,983 deaths, the highest figure on the continent.