US cities struggling with the numbers of dead
More than 10,000 people in the US have died from coronavirus, and some local officials say they are struggling to store and bury the bodies.
In New York City, the chair of the city council’s health committee, Mark D Levine, tweeted that hospitals are now forced to rely on refrigerated trailers to hold bodies. The city was preparing contingency plans in case the death rate didn’t fall, including temporarily burying bodies in a local park, he said.
The tweet caused a stir, and since then, the mayor’s office has said it is not currently planning to use local parks as burial grounds, but is exploring using Hart Island for temporary burials instead. The island is an uninhabited strip of land north-east of the Bronx which is used for mass burials.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, which has over 4,560 cases and 170 deaths, the mayor has asked the federal government to provide more refrigerated units to store bodies, because morgues, coroners officers and funeral homes are overwhelmed.
One funeral director told Nola.com: “I’ve been a funeral director since 1962, and I’ve never seen this.”
BBC
