Johannesburg (AFP)

The retirement home "Casa Serena", the serene house in French, has never been so badly named. Fourteen of the residents of this establishment in Johannesburg, South Africa, died after contracting Covid-19 and fear lurks today among the living.

At the start of the pandemic, Case Serena was home to 64 residents.

"We expected people to die like every year during the (southern) winter, but there is a concentration of death", sighs Mario Serra, head of the retirement home.

He too contracted the new coronavirus, but he got away with it.

"It's like walking in direct sunlight and all of a sudden a big paw with incredible nails is scratching your back, he testifies. You see the blood and you don't know what it is."

South Africa is now the fifth country in the world most affected by the pandemic in terms of confirmed cases (more than 408,000). The official death toll has exceeded 6,000, but it is vastly underestimated, experts have warned.

And between 40,000 and 50,000 people could die from Covid-19 by the end of the year in the country, according to official projections.

At Casa Serena, loneliness and helplessness have taken precedence among the residents, who are too afraid to leave their rooms.

"In the afternoon, we used to go out, play cards, but now sleeping on the bed is the only thing I can do," said Esterina Satori, 88.

"The disease is everywhere around us, we do not know when we will catch it. I know a couple who went to the hospital and they never came back," adds a 79-year-old resident, Giuseppe Tassi.

- Powder trail -

Worried residents ask: "+ Am I going to die? Am I positive? Am I negative? + And we don't have the answer," continues Mario Serra.

Testing the residents is futile, say the staff. "We treat the symptoms, that's all," confesses the head nurse of the establishment, Margaret Humphreys.

"If a resident coughs and we do not intervene in time, it spreads like wildfire," she warns.

Among the residents are several descendants of Italian prisoners from World War II or Italian migrants who made their fortunes in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s.

At the beginning of the year, they first saw, on television, the epidemic wreaking havoc in retirement homes in Italy.

"At the beginning, Italy was the country most affected in Europe, but they finally came out. We are just starting to reach the peak in South Africa now," said Guiseppe Tassi.

In the retirement home, visits are extremely rare.

Some waited more than three months to be able to see their loved ones quickly. Like Rita Bellini who just spoke, through a window and for only fifteen minutes, to her 89-year-old father Mario.

For several days, she and the daughters of other residents cooked meals for all the residents of Casa Serena to help the staff also decimated by the pandemic.

Rita Bellini anticipates the day when the whole family will be allowed to reunite. "We will have a feast all together and we will take pictures of the friends who remain."

© 2020 AFP