Tag Archives: coronavirus deaths

Rome funeral workers protest as coffins pile up in cemeteries

ROME (Reuters) – Undertakers protested on Friday against a massive backlog of coffins building up at Rome cemeteries, saying city authorities were failing to cope with a surge of coronavirus deaths.

Funeral directors said more than 2,000 bodies were being stored at Rome’s sole crematorium, which can handle around 50 cremations a day, while mortuary rooms at other cemeteries were packed, awaiting burial or interment.

Some bodies have been in storage since the start of the year, they said.

“Every few days we are told the cemeteries are blocked and they haven’t got any more room to take in the dead,” said Giovanni Caciolli, head of Italy’s federation of funeral workers.

In a statement earlier this week, the city council company that handles burials and cremations, AMA, acknowledged that it was facing an unprecedented situation and was working to create 60,000 new burial plots for the city.

“AMA is doing its utmost to deal with a steadily increasing number of deaths,” it said.

It said the city had registered 4,763 more deaths between October 2020 and March 2021 than in the same months of 2019/2020, with the rising trend continuing into April.

Italy has reported 116,000 coronavirus-related deaths so far. The majority have been in northern Italy, but in recent months the virus has claimed a growing number of victims in central and southern Italy.

Funeral directors say hearses face lengthy queues at city cemeteries as they await workers to log and store the coffins.

A video obtained by Reuters showed large refrigerated containers parked outside the Prima Porta cemetery. Workers said the containers were being used to hold coffins.

Protesters on Friday laid funeral wreaths in front of the Temple of Hercules, close to Rome city hall.

“Sorry, they don’t allow us to bury your loved ones,” funeral homes wrote on the wreaths.

Earlier this week a local man plastered huge posters across the city apologizing to his mother, who died in early March but whose body is still stuck in storage. “I am sorry mum that I’ve not been able to have you buried yet,” the posters say.

Opposition politicians say the crisis could have been averted if the city had heeded warnings in 2017 that it needed to modernize and develop the crematorium.

(Reporting by Yara Nardi and Angelo Amante; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Giles Elgood)

U.S. records 10,000 coronavirus deaths in 11 days as fatalities surpass 150,000

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – U.S. deaths from the novel coronavirus surpassed 150,000 on Wednesday, the highest level in the world and rising by 10,000 in 11 days, according to a Reuters tally.

This is the fastest increase in fatalities since the United States went from 100,000 cases to 110,000 cases in 11 days in early June, according to the tally. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2P87LUu)

Nationally, COVID-19 deaths have risen for three weeks in a row while the number of new cases week-over-week recently fell for the first time since June.

A spike in infections in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas this month has overwhelmed hospitals. The rise has forced states to make a U-turn on reopening economies that were restricted by lockdowns in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.

Texas leads the nation with nearly 4,000 deaths so far this month, followed by Florida with 2,900 and California, the most populous state, with 2,500. The Texas figure includes a backlog of hundreds of deaths after the state changed the way it counted COVID-19 fatalities.

While deaths have rapidly risen in July in these three states, New York and New Jersey still lead the nation in total lives lost and for deaths per capita, according to a Reuters tally.

Of the 20 countries with the biggest outbreak, the United States ranks sixth for deaths per capita, at 4.5 fatalities per 10,000 people. It is exceeded by the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Peru and Chile.

(Reporting by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Most Americans huddle indoors as coronavirus deaths keep spiking

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Four new states imposed sweeping stay-at-home directives on Wednesday in response to the coronavirus pandemic, putting over 80% of Americans under lockdown as the number of deaths in the United States nearly doubled in three days.

The governors of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Nevada each instituted the strict policies on a day when the death toll from COVID-19 shot up by 925 to more than 4,800 nationwide, with 214,000 confirmed cases, according to a Reuters tally.

President Donald Trump said he saw no need for the federal government to issue a nationwide decree, with 39 states and the District of Columbia now requiring residents to stay home except for essential outings to the doctor or grocery store.

He also told a White House briefing on Wednesday he was considering a plan to halt flights to coronavirus hot spots.

“We’re certainly looking at it, but once you do that you really are clamping down on an industry that is desperately needed,” Trump told a White House news briefing.

Such a plan might conceivably shut down traffic at airports in hard-hit New York, New Orleans and Detroit.

“We’re looking at the whole thing,” Trump said of curtailing domestic flights already greatly reduced as demand has fallen.

White House medical experts have forecast that even if Americans hunker down in their homes to slow the spread of COVID-19, some 100,000 to 240,000 people could die from the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

A Pentagon official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the U.S. Department of Defense was working to provide up to 100,000 body bags for use by civilian authorities in the coming weeks.

Since 2010, the flu has killed between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 1918-1919 flu pandemic killed 675,000 in the United States, according to the CDC.

A healthcare worker walks outside a newly constructed field hospital in the East Meadow of Central Park during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid

New York state remained the epicenter of the outbreak, accounting for more than a third of the U.S. deaths. Governor Andrew Cuomo told police on Wednesday to enforce rules more aggressively for social distancing.

“Young people must get this message, and they still have not gotten the message. You still see too many situations with too much density by young people,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said in imposing rules to close playgrounds, swing sets, basketball courts and similar spaces.

“How reckless and irresponsible and selfish for people not to do it on their own,” Cuomo said.

CALIFORNIA CASES SURGE

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference the city was contracting with hotels as part of a massive effort to add 65,000 additional hospital beds by the end of the month.

De Blasio, also a Democrat, said the city had arranged to add 10,000 beds at 20 hotels, which have lost most of their guests as travel has stopped.

“This is going to be an epic process during the month of April to build out all that capacity,” de Blasio said. “But this goal can be reached.”

California saw the number of coronavirus cases surge by roughly 1,300 over the day before to nearly 10,000 as Governor Gavin Newsom warned that even as stay-at-home policies appeared to be having some effect, the state would run out of intensive- care hospital beds equipped with ventilators within six weeks.

Newsom said California could still manage to “bend” the state’s infection curve more, saving the need for additional beds, if residents were rigorous in staying home and avoiding contact with others.

“We are in a completely different place than the state of New York and I hope we will continue to be, but we won’t unless people continue to practice physical distancing and do their part,” the Democratic governor told a news conference in the state capital, Sacramento.

But Americans under lockdown and largely unable to work struggled with making ends meet as rent came due on Wednesday, the first day of the month.

In Oakland, California, Alfa Cristina Morales said she had been surviving on money saved for a U.S. citizenship application since losing her job at a coffee shop. Morales had sought unemployment benefits to support her two-year-old son.

“We’re worried that it won’t be enough,” she said.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said a six-week-old baby had died from COVID-19, in what he called “a reminder that nobody is safe from this virus.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Fox News that Broward County would likely allow two cruise ships with coronavirus outbreaks carrying a total of 2,500 people to dock in Fort Lauderdale, despite his misgivings about potentially contagious foreign nationals.

“We were concerned about a deluge into the hospitals, but I think it turns out that there will probably be some who need to go, but it’s very manageable and the local hospital system thinks that they can handle it,” DeSantis, a Republican, told Fox.

At Fort Lauderdale, Floridians aboard the ships would be taken home and flights arranged for foreigners, he said.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Tim Ahmann, Daniel Trotta, Maria Caspani, Nathan Layne, Stephanie Kelly, Peter Szekely, Lisa Shumaker, Sharon Bernstein, Jeff Mason, Mohammad Zargham, Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)