New York so far has been hit the hardest stateside by this pandemic, with 37258 cases and at least 385 people dying from the Corona Virus. They have about half of all of the cases here in the United States. So they are now facing another problem that many states may soon face as their morgues are filling up.
“The Department of Homeland Security has been briefed that New York City’s morgues are nearing capacity, according to a department official and a second person familiar with the situation.
Officials were told that morgues in the city are expected to reach capacity next week, per the briefing. A third person familiar with the situation in New York said some of the city’s hospital morgues hit capacity in the past seven days. And a FEMA spokesperson told POLITICO that New York has asked for emergency mortuary assistance. Hawaii and North Carolina have asked for mortuary help as well, and the disaster response agency is currently reviewing the requests, according to the spokesperson.
If the available morgue space in New York City fills up as the number of COVID-19 deaths increases, federal help will be available, a former senior administration official said, noting that the George W. Bush administration sent mortuary assistance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Department of Health and Human Services oversees the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams, which can help set up temporary morgues. The teams operate in response to requests from local authorities.
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For now, city officials do not seem especially alarmed. Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokesperson for the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, said concerns about morgue capacity may be unfounded. OCME’s morgues can store up to 900 bodies across all five boroughs, she said.
“We have the ability to expand pretty dramatically,” she said. “If you look back at what we did during 9/11, we have the ability to create mobile stations that allow us to house bodies if we run out of space.”
This kind of thing should not be a problem in our first world country. Once we get through this we need to make sure this never happens again. Hopefully, they will put forth legislation to better fund the CDC to better combat this kind of situation.
NY city, and NY state unprepared because of their incompetent governor!
Seems they forgot they have to bury the bodies too, not stack them up and whine!!
This story is a pile of BS. NYC Morgues have space for 900 bodies and have emergency back up storage capacity in the form of refrigerated trucks. Besides the death rates are exagerated to get more money