As communities in various parts of the United States are suffering from the increase in coronavirus cases, funeral homes in the Southern California contagion area have had to turn down families of deceased people for lack of space due to the build-up of space. of corpses.
Los Angeles County, the epicenter of the California crisis, has already exceeded 10,000 deaths from COVID. Hospitals in the area are overwhelmed and are struggling to maintain basic supplies, such as oxygen, to treat a record number of patients with respiratory problems. On Saturday, crews from the US Army Corps of Engineers arrived to supply some hospitals with oxygen.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, an average of just over 2,500 people across the country have died from COVID-19 in the past seven days. The daily number of newly registered cases during that period averaged nearly 195,000, down from the previous two weeks. It is feared that the end-of-year gatherings could cause another spike in infections.
The head of the state funeral directors said morgues are filling up in California as the COVID-19 death toll in the United States exceeded 350,000 on Sunday. Experts expect a fresh increase in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths from the gatherings that took place over Christmas and New Year.
Data collected by Johns Hopkins University shows that the United States crossed the threshold on Sunday morning. More than 20 million people in the country are infected. The United States has started using two coronavirus vaccines to protect healthcare workers and nursing home residents and those who care for them, but the launch of the vaccination program has been criticized as slow and chaotic.
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Several states have reported record numbers of cases in recent days, including North Carolina and Arizona. The United States has by far the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the world, followed by Brazil, which has reported more than 195,000 deaths.
“I’ve been in the funeral home for 40 years and never in my life thought this could happen, tell a family, ‘No, we can’t accommodate your family member,’” said Magda Maldonado, owner of Continental Funeral. At home in Los Angeles.
Continental processes an average of 30 carcasses per day, six times the normal number. The owners of the morgues call to see if any of them can receive bodies and the answer is always the same: they are full.
To meet the high demand for the large number of bodies, Maldonado has rented additional 15-foot fridges for two of the four facilities it operates in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Continental has also taken a day or two to pick up bodies from hospitals to serve residential clients.
Bob Achermann, executive director of the California Funeral Directors Association, said the entire funeral and cremation process has slowed down, including the embalming of bodies and the processing of death certificates. In normal times cremation can take place in a day or two, now there is a delay of at least a week or more.
Achermann said that in the southern part of the state, “all the funeral homes I’ve talked to” say “we’re working as fast as we can.” “The volume is just unbelievable and they are worried that they will not be able to keep up,” he added. “And the worst of the increase can still wait for us.”