Arizona, United States
With the cases of Coronavirus on the rise in 39 of the country’s 50 states, Arizona and Texas are preparing for the worst and have begun to mobilize refrigerated trucks to use them as temporary morgues in the face of the multiplying number of burials.
In the Arizona county of Maricopa, the one with the most cases in the entire state, the medical examiner’s office plans to start using four refrigerated trucks this Thursday, since on Wednesday the morgue was already at 75% of its capacity, with 156 corpses when it has capacity for 209.
The four of them trucks They will allow additional space for 60 to 80 bodies, that county’s director of communications, Fields Moseley, told local KTAR News radio.
In the last 24 hours, Arizona registered 3,459 new infections and 58 deaths from the virus.
Furthermore, the hospitals are almost to the limit: 87% of beds for general income and 89% of intensive care units are already occupied, while 53% of ventilators for the most seriously ill patients are in use, the Department reported Thursday. Health of Arizona.
“THIS IS REAL”
The other state that is already getting ready for an even more difficult scenario is Texas, where officials from big cities – mostly governed by Democratic mayors – are fighting a battle against Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who refuses to take strict measures and does not allow local authorities to adopt them either.
In Nueces County, where the city of Corpus Christi is located, coroner Adel Shaker asked a trailer from federal authorities for the saturation of funeral homes.
“Now I have to order additional bags to corpses and more trailers that serve as morgue. People have to understand that this is real, “Shaker told the local KRIS network.
Likewise, the border county of Hidalgo asked the federal government for another trailer that has a capacity for 50 bodies and that it plans to share with neighboring Cameron County, both among the most affected in Texas, reported the local television channel KRGV-TV.
In addition, in Bexar County, which is home to the progressive city of San Antonio, two refrigerated trucks are now ready for use and three more are expected to arrive by the end of this week, according to local KSAT television. Each trailer has a capacity for between 24 and 36 corpses.
It is not the first time that the United States has used refrigerated trucks as mobile morgues. New York He had to place these vehicles on the back doors of his hospitals and buried almost 900 people in his mass grave on Hart Island (The Bronx) during the worst moment of the pandemic.
At first, the pandemic hit hardest cities in the eastern United States, such as Boston, New York and Washington DC; But for more than a month, the focus has shifted to the southern and western states, which were the first to reopen their economies.
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