Where will the bodies go? US braces for a ‘very deadly period’
- As the US body count grows, so do the problems of dealing with the dead
- Top health official and US president warn of a spike in deaths
There are the new dead. And then there are the bodies waiting in overcrowded mortuaries to be buried as cities struggle to meet demand and families wrestle with rules on social distancing that make the usual funeral rituals impossible.
Med Alliance Group, a medical distributor in Illinois, is besieged by calls and emails from cities around the country. Each asks the same thing: Send more refrigerated trailers so that we can handle a situation we never could have imagined.
“They’re coming from all over: from hospitals, health systems, coroner’s offices, VA facilities, county and state health departments, state emergency departments and funeral homes,” said Christie Penzol, a spokeswoman for Med Alliance. “It’s heart-wrenching.”
The company has rented all its trailers and there’s an 18-week wait for new materials to build more, she said.
With US medical experts and even President Donald Trump now estimating the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic could reach 240,000 nationwide, the sheer practicalities of death – where to put the bodies – are worrying just about everyone as cities, hospitals and private medical groups clamour to secure additional storage.
The need is compounded by private mortuary space that is occupied longer than usual as people wait to bury their loved ones – regardless of how they died – because rules on social distancing make planning funerals difficult.