Crematoriums in Mexico City Collapse: “Are Saturated” by COVID-19 Fatalities

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May 10, 2020

The bodies have to wait more than 24 hours to be cremated or are sent to other cities

Mexico City is the place with the highest number of infections (8,705) and deaths (729) from COVID-19. And in addition to hospitals, funeral services are the most resentful of the rapid increase in these numbers.

And it is that managers of different capital funeral homes already warned that the cremation ovens in the city “are saturated” by the dead of the new coronavirus. They added that to be cremated, a body can expect to wait shifts of more than 24 hours, or they also begin to choose to send them to the State of Mexico.

” Everything is saturated, there are no hours to cremate. In general, all funeral homes have a gap of one, two or even three days, because the hours are already saturated, ” Javier Rodríguez, from Funerales Juárez, near the Hospital Juárez, told Milenio He added: “We have a need to go further cremating: Acolman, Cuautitlán Izcalli, Ecatepec and Tultitlán, because here the CdMx ovens, public and private, are saturated.”

(Photo: REUTERS / Gustavo Graf)

Specifically, one of the crematoria with the highest demand is the one located in Palo Alto, Cuajimalpa. The two furnaces that they have there operate 24 hours a day and these days, in the middle of Phase 3 of COVID-19 in the country, they carry out up to 40 services a day.

The coordinator of the Pantheons in Cuajimalpa, Raúl Peñaloza, accepted that Palo Alto is operating at its maximum capacity: “ We are saturated, why ?, because they (courts and funeral homes) are not scheduled, they take out their cremation order and immediately come here “

In addition, added to the fact that in funeral homes they maintain that the service progresses slowly, the furnaces require maintenance and spare partsMilenio reports having visited Palo Alto and verified the operation, as well as the black smoke that comes out of the chimneys, which generates annoyance and neighborhood complaints, for which they installed filters.

In this regard, the workers indicated that the bodies arrive in black bags and when they are put in they release black smoke for 10 minutes, but then the service is normalized, despite the fact that they work at forced marches.

Precisely, the Reforma newspaper had already reported that funeral homes in the eastern Valley of Mexico alerted that they already had their services saturated because of people who died from COVID-19 or are suspected of having carried the disease.

In municipalities such as Los Reyes, La Paz, Chicoloapan and Chalco there are around 30 funeral parlors, but only in three of them do they have active cremation service.

David Licona, a representative of the Nezahualcóyotl funeral association, revealed to that media that only one of the crematoriums is public and is located in the Municipal Pantheon of the entity. The other pair are private services, but they do not serve all funeral homes.

Licona also explained that eight out of 10 services for which they are required refer to patients with death from COVID-19. This causes waiting times to be up to two or three days after death; that is to say, the hospitals manage to keep the bodies for more than 48 hours.

(Photo: Cuartoscuro)

More than 5,000 people do not know if they are infected

Meanwhile, more than 5,000 patients who are hospitalized do not know if they have Covid-19.

According to Milenio, 2 thousand 943 of the patients who are in uncertainty are located in the metropolitan area of ​​the Valley of Mexico, which represents 56% of the total cases.

In the State of Mexico, 1,962 people are reported pending diagnosis, followed by Mexico City with 982 cases. These demarcations are followed by Baja California with 454 and Veracruz with 264 pending tests.

Official figures from the federal government indicate that there are 20,887 tests for Covid-19 pending to give a result to patients, of which 254 have already died, which is why they are classified as suspicious deaths.

In Mexico, so far, they are recorded 33.460 infections and 3,353 deaths COVID-19.

Source: milenio.com, infobae.com, coronavirus.gob.mx

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