THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) – Even after their deaths, COVID-19 victims endure severe isolation in Thessaloniki, the city in Greece most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Efcharis Gunseer, 84, could not see his daughter at any point in a losing battle with the virus, nor at the nursing home where he first fell ill or at the hospital where he spent a few weeks. The staff of the overwhelmed intensive care unit was also too busy to set up phone calls, the daughter said.
When Gunseer died in late August, her body was wrapped in two plastic bags and placed in a coffin wrapped in foil. According to the rules established by the city authorities, she was not buried next to her deceased husband, but in a section of a cemetery reserved for people infected with the virus. Her grave remains closed to visitors.
“I think dying alone is the worst thing that can happen,” Mikaela Triandafyllidou’s 45-year-old daughter told the Associated Press. “I only saw my mother for a moment, from a distance at the morgue for identification … People die with no one there for them, like dogs.”
More than 300 people have been buried so far in segregated plots, according to Thessaloniki officials.
Greece suffered an alarming downturn at the end of October, when the eight-month period of the country’s low-level infections came to an abrupt end and hospital wards were pushed to capacity. Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, and the neighboring areas in the north of the country have borne the brunt of the growth. For weeks, the city has reported a higher daily number of new cases than Athens, despite having a population about a quarter the size.
The emergency at the city’s hospitals was adapted to the two cemeteries in Thessaloniki, where the victims of the pandemic are buried, and the rows of graves are freshly dug to keep the burials short. Thin white crosses and small plywood marks mark the graves.
In Greece, where most cemeteries are overcrowded, the remains are usually removed after three years of burial and taken to a ossuary, but coronavirus victims will remain buried for 10 years.
Giorgos Avarlis, the deputy mayor of Thessaloniki, said authorities were concerned that body bags and coffin lids could slow down the bodies of pandemic victims.
“It is strictly forbidden to bury them anywhere else,” Avarlis said. He noted that people who died from sexually transmitted diseases were buried in reserved sections of cemeteries, a practice abandoned decades ago.
The scientific opinion on the posthumous danger posed by COVID-19 is divided. Forensic doctors wear full protective equipment when performing autopsies on infected people, citing studies that indicate that the virus remains posthumously in the respiratory system, respiratory secretions, feces and blood.
However, Symeon Metallidis, an assistant professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Thessaloniki, considers the cemetery’s precautions to be largely unnecessary.
“It simply came to our notice then. It doesn’t make sense, “Metallidis said. “There is no evidence of transmission of the virus after death, nor is there any reason for it to be buried for 10 years.”
At the Evosmos cemetery in Thessaloniki, an Orthodox Christian priest sits under a small black marquise waiting to perform funeral services, while gravediggers and white-wearing robes attend funerals.
Chrysanthi Botsari, 69, recently lost her 75-year-old husband to the virus. She said she was never officially told where her funeral would take place in late November and had to follow up on the information herself.
“I did not know where they would take him. They just told us that they shouldn’t be in cemeteries where other people are buried because of the coronavirus, “Botsari said.
“It’s unacceptable to me, inhuman,” the widow said. “All these people died alone and helpless.”
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