Refrigerated trailers to be used as improvised morgues moistened outside two hospitals on Thursday as New York City deals with the rising death count in the nation’s coronavirus pandemic epicenter.
Shocking video of corpses being loaded into a refrigerated truck with a truck outside Brooklyn Hospital in New York City came when 776 patients in US died from coronavirus and 33,000 have been diagnosed till now.
The last time New York took such drastic steps was just after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when the city’s medical examiner’s office was charged with sorting hundreds of thousands of body parts from the 2,753 people killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
The coronavirus death toll in the US has risen at 1,100. This week at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens — where a refrigerated truck was installed by the medical examiner’s office, according to department spokeswoman Aja Worthy-Davis — at least 13 people had died from Covid-19 in a 24-hour period.
New Orleans is predicted to become the next hotspot-there are reportedly 1,350 cases and 73 deaths-but Fauci said he was concerned about Detroit and Los Angeles on Monday too.
Outside New York Bellevue Medical Center, next to the house of the medical examiner, trucks and white tents were also set up.
The refrigerated trucks are not unique to coronavirus cases, Davis observed. These are supposed to help relieve hospital morgue space if necessary. If the hospital morgues reach capacity the trailers will be used.
The president expanded social isolation recommendations until the end of April and on Sunday gave the bleak promise that if the death toll remained below 200,000 by the time the pandemic is over, he may have done a ‘good job.’
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has said that it has received a request for help in mortuary activities from New York and other States. Similar demands were made in Hawaii and North Carolina.
New York City already has longstanding arrangements to provide refrigerated trucks for businesses, but that program is not current, officials said. Such trailers are expected to be deployed at different locations, like upcoming hospitals such as the one set up at the Javits Convention Center.