LONDON – For more than a century, a family-run funeral home for John Harris has buried people in the East End, London’s working class. He says he has never seen death on the scale of Covid-19.
He received 20 calls a day and hired more staff to deal with it. “My 92-year-old father was burying during the Blitz in the 1940s,” when German bombers flattened much of the area, Mr Harris said. “He did not experience this level of mortality.”
The outburst here gives a strong warning to the US and others about what’s in store, if more contagious variants of the new coronavirus – such as the one that pervades this densely populated and ethnically mixed community – take over.
In the East End, Barking and Dagenham neighborhoods earlier this month, it is estimated that one in 16 residents is infected with Covid-19. The local hospital in nearby Romford rationed oxygen as the beds became short. Recently a gloomy stage has passed: over 1,100 patients have died of the virus.
The local government has four cars crossing the streets with megaphones that read “Coronavirus kills”. Religious leaders have agreed to stop providing personal services in an effort to stop the spread of the pathogen.