Coronavirus: California funeral homes run out of space due to accumulation of corpses

As communities in various parts of the United States suffer from the increase in coronavirus cases, funeral homes in the high contagion zone of southern California have had to turn away families of those who have died due to lack of space in due to the accumulation. of corpses.

Los Angeles County, the epicenter of the crisis in California, has already passed 10,000 deaths from Covid-19. Hospitals in the area are overwhelmed and struggling to maintain the basics, like oxygen, to treat a record number of patients with breathing problems. On Saturday, crews from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arrived to deliver oxygen to some hospitals.

Across the country, just over 2,500 people have died on average from Covid-19 in the past seven days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The daily number of new cases recorded during this period averaged nearly 195,000, a decrease from the previous two weeks.

The head of the state’s association of funeral directors said mortuaries filled up in California as the country neared a gruesome death toll of 350,000 from the coronavirus. More than 20 million people in the country have been infected, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

“I have been in the funeral industry for 40 years and I never thought in my life that this could happen, saying to a family, ‘No we can’t have it, I’m sorry,’ ” said Magda Maldonado, owner of Continental Funeral Home. in Los Angeles.

Continental handles an average of 30 carcasses per day, six times its normal number. The owners of the morgues call each other to see if any of them can receive bodies and the answer is always the same: they are full.

In order to meet the high demand due to the large number of bodies, Maldonado has rented additional 15-meter refrigerators for two of the four facilities it operates in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Continental also took a day or two to collect 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. Normally, 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 downstate, “every funeral home I’ve spoken to says’ we’re working as fast as we can.” The volume is just amazing and they’re worried they can’t keep up. ” , he added. “And worst of all, the increase could still await us.”