LOS ANGELES (AP) – As communities in various parts of the United States experience the increase in coronavirus cases, funeral homes in the high-contagion area of Southern California have had to turn away families of deceased people because they are running out of space before the accumulation of corpses.
Los Angeles County, the epicenter of the crisis in California, has already exceeded 10,000 deaths from COVID. Hospitals in the area are overwhelmed and struggling to maintain the basics, 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 oxygen to some hospitals.
Nationwide, an average of just over 2,500 people have died of COVID-19 in the past seven days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The daily number of new cases registered in that period has averaged nearly 195,000, a decline from the previous two weeks. It is feared that the end-of-year meetings could cause another spike in infections.
The head of the state funeral directors association said morgues are filling up in California as the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States surpassed 350,000 on Sunday. Experts anticipate another increase in coronavirus cases and deaths stemming from the gatherings that took place during Christmas and New Years.
Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University shows that the United States crossed the threshold on Sunday morning. More than 20 million people in the country have been infected. The United States has begun using two coronavirus vaccines to protect healthcare workers and nursing home residents and those who care for them, but the launch of the inoculation program has been criticized as slow and chaotic.
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 industry for 40 years and never in my life did I think this could happen, say to a family: ‘No, we cannot receive your family member,'” said Magda Maldonado, owner of Continental Funeral. Home in Los Angeles.
Continental handles an average of 30 bodies per day, six times its normal figure. The morgue owners call each other to see if anyone can receive bodies and the answer is always the same: they are full.
To meet the high demand due to the large body count, Maldonado has rented extra 50-foot (15-meter) refrigerators for two of the four facilities it manages in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Continental has also taken a day or two to collect the bodies from hospitals to serve residential customers.
Bob Achermann, executive director of the California Funeral Directors Association, said the entire burial and cremation process has slowed down, including the embalming of bodies and the processing of death certificates. In normal times, cremation could 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 that I’ve talked to say ‘we’re working as fast as we can.’ “The volume is just incredible and they fear they won’t be able to keep up,” he added. “And the worst of the increase could still be waiting for us.”
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