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LONDON – For more than a century, John Harris’s family funeral home has buried people from the East End, the working class of London. He says he has never seen death on the scale of Covid-19.
He receives 20 calls a day and has hired more staff to cope. “My father, who is 92, did funerals during the Blitz in the 1940s,” when German bombers razed much of the area, Harris said. “He did not experience this level of mortality.”
The outbreak here offers a stern warning to the United States and others of what to expect if more contagious variants of the new coronavirus – like the one sweeping through this densely populated and ethnically mixed community – take hold.
In the East End of Barking and Dagenham earlier this month, one in 16 residents was infected with Covid-19. The nearby Romford local hospital rationed oxygen as beds were short. It recently took a dark step: more than 1,100 patients have died from the virus.
The local government has four cars driving the streets with megaphones screaming the words “Coronavirus is killing”. Religious leaders have agreed to stop holding in-person services in an attempt to stem the spread of the pathogen.
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