Thousands upon thousands of people have tragically passed away due to the coronavirus pandemic swarming the globe. Doctors describe the experience as one similar to drowning and is quite a frightening ordeal.
Patients lay in a hospital bed all alone, cared for only by medical professionals resembling something from an alien movie as they try their best to protect themselves from the virus with PPEs. No visitors are allowed and they slip away without being able to say goodbye.
But the shock doesn’t end there. According to Inside Edition, field burials have shot to five times the normal rate in New York City as officials race to keep up with a surprising number of deaths due to the coronavirus.
Hart Island, the city’s public graveyard for the unidentified and unclaimed, is brimming with pine boxes full of those who lost the battle against the virus. Gravediggers wearing hazmat suits walk around as if in a scene from a sci-fi movie.
This burial plot isn’t the only one that can’t keep up with the number of deceased due to the coronavirus. Refrigerated trucks sit outside New York City hospitals as an overflow solution to the backlog in morgues.
The city’s chief medical examiner ordered that bodies can only stay in the morgue for two weeks instead of 30 days.
“The pictures of our fellow New Yorkers being buried on Hart Island are devastating for all of us. want to make sure everyone knows what they’re seeing and what is actually happening on Hart Island. Remember, these are human beings. These are neighbors we’ve lost.”
Funeral directors, cemetery workers and everyone involved in the process of preparing a loved one for burial or cremation are struggling to keep up. While barely a vehicle is on the road, swingsets are empty and parking lots are practically vacant, funeral homes are sadly bustling.
Rabbi Shmuel Plafker, the chaplain at Mount Richmond Cemetery on Staten Island, is astounded at the long list of burials he presides over day after day that stem from the coronavirus.
“There’s a tremendous sadness. Were it not for this, they would be living, some healthy, some not so healthy. But they would be alive.”
Mount Richmond Cemetery is overseen by the Hebrew Free Burial Association, which focuses on providing a burial for the Jewish who die with little or nothing.
It’s filled with individuals who perished in a manufacturing fire, those who succumbed to the Spanish flu and even Holocaust survivors who left Europe.
But now, it’s filling up with the bodies of those who lost the battle against the coronavirus.
Dedicated individuals assist with the careful cleansing of the bodies as Jewish law dictates, then wraps them in a white shroud. While the Torah calls for burial as soon as possible, that’s an almost impossible task.
In fact, there are funeral homes and cemeteries turning families away. The casket companies don’t even have enough caskets, explained James Conofrio, a funeral director who oversees Mount Richmond’s funeral arrangements.
Even though Hebrew Free Burial stockpiled caskets, personal protective equipment and other supplies as the coronavirus lurked, they never anticipate the sheer number of loved ones they’d be tending to.
The mortuary cooler they ordered is remotely enough; instead, they brought in a refrigerated trailer.
The employees aren’t just struggling to keep up, but they’re struggling to cope with the devastation they see every day. Amy Koplow, who runs Hebrew Free Burial, said they would bury an average of one person per day. Nowadays they are burying a dozen people a day.
Even harder is when potentially exposed family members must remain in self-isolation, unable to attend a loved one’s funeral. They cannot travel there and must social distance.
It’s an eerily different day as the coronvirus inflicts more pain and suffering upon families and stresses those who may not be on the front line, but instead are on the backend of a devastating situation.
Learn more about what’s happening in the video below. It’s heartbreakingly astonishing.
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