New York considers using a park as a cemetery for the coronavirus

In 1985, when AIDS was hitting the United States mercilessly, New York authorities buried 16 people who had died from the disease on the southern tip of Hart Island, since it was mistakenly believed then that the disease could infect others bodies.

In any case, De Blasio has insisted that it is a contingency plan and that his objective is for the city to be prepared for what may happen.

“If we need to do temporary burials to be able to overcome the crisis and then work with each family to make the arrangements, we have the capacity to do it,” he said.

Confirmed cases in the United States topped 336,000 on Sunday, the country with the most diagnoses and where deaths exceed 10,000.

“There is going to be a peak in hospitalizations, a week with highs in the ICU, and unfortunately, the peak week of death,” Admiral Brett Giroir, a physician and member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Monday. to the television program “Good Morning America” ​​on ABC.

In the United States, about twice as many people are dying a day as in Spain and Italy, and hospitals are reporting a chaotic shortage of beds, respirators and protective equipment.

While New York City accounts for nearly a third of coronavirus deaths in the United States, more than 90% of Americans have been ordered to stay home.

A model from the University of Washington, one of several cited by some state officials, projected the peak need for hospital beds for April 15 and that daily deaths would reach 3,130, its peak, on April 16.

However, the governor of New York believes that the death rate reached a plateau in the last two days and “the hospital system is today at its maximum capacity.”

President Donald Trump, whom critics have accused of downplaying the epidemic and trying to hasten an end to the devastating economic paralysis, repeated Monday in a tweet that there is “LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!”