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Nearly 37,000 Americans died from the coronavirus in November, a grim figure approaching May’s toll – and health officials fear the numbers could climb further, as many people ignored calls to stay home during Thanksgiving.
Amid the surge in cases, states have started to reopen field hospitals, overcrowded hospitals are setting up mobile morgues, and funerals are broadcast live or carried out behind the wheel.
“I have no doubt that we are going to see an increasing number of deaths … and it is a horrible and tragic place,” Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Associated Press .
“The weeks are going to be very dark,” he added.
Although November’s tally was well below the 60,699 recorded in April, it was dangerously close to the next total of nearly 42,000 in May, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
As of June, deaths had fallen to just over 20,000 after states closed many businesses and ordered people to stay home.
As of Wednesday, 270,881 people died from the virus in the United States, where an estimated 13.7 million cases have been recorded, according to Johns Hopkins.
The rapidly deteriorating situation is particularly upsetting as vaccine distribution could begin in a few weeks, Michaud said.
New York City, the epicenter of the US epidemic earlier this year, reopened a field hospital last week on Staten Island.
In Missouri, a mobile mortuary that Mercy Hospital Springfield acquired in 2011 after a tornado struck near Joplin and killed around 160 people has again been commissioned.
On Sunday, he held two bodies until funeral home workers could arrive.
In Saint-Louis, burials have increased by about a third this year compared to last year at the Bellefontaine cemetery.
The cremated remains of some 20 people are being stored while their families wait for a safer time to hold memorial services.
“You want to be safe at the grave so that you don’t have to do another funeral service” for another relative, said Richard Lay, vice president of Bellefontaine Cemetery.
In Massachusetts, meanwhile, the National Guard has delivered cots, medical supplies and other items for a 250-bed field hospital in Worcester in case medical centers across the state are overwhelmed.
Wisconsin has a field hospital in West Allis ready to welcome overflow patients, a Nevada hospital has added hospital bed capacity in a parking garage, and Rhode Island has opened two field hospitals with more than 900 combined beds.
“Hospitals across the country are worried about their capacity on a daily basis… and we’re not even really into the winter season and we haven’t seen the impact of Thanksgiving trips and Thanksgiving gatherings,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, Principal Investigator at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“You can’t just say that doctors and nurses from other states will come because those other states are also treating COVID patients,” he added.
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