NYC Funeral Home Overwhelmed With Bodies of People Who Succumbed To COVID-19

One hundred bodies of coronavirus victims have been discovered outside of a funeral home in New York. The U.S. coronavirus death toll has crossed the 60,500 mark as hundreds of new COVID-19 cases continue to be reported each day from different parts of the country.

The funeral home in Brooklyn, New York, received complaints from neighbors who reported an extremely unpleasant smell from two trucks with no refrigeration, parked just outside the funeral home.

"The Department has been notified of storage issues of decedents and alternate arrangements are being made by the funeral home," the New York State Health Department said in a statement.

The reports suggest that The Andrew T Cleckley Funeral Home rented lorries to put the corpses along with ice. When the police arrived after receiving complaints from the neighborhood, the corpses were shifted to a refrigerated truck by men wearing protective gear.

Funeral home directors across the country are responsible for storing decedents awaiting burial in proper and controlled conditions so that the bodies are not infected and remain preserved for appropriate burial.

However, most of the funeral homes in regions reporting the highest number of COVID-19 related deaths have run out of appropriate storage for the decedents. Nonetheless, the state health department is expected to issue a summon for improper storage of the deceased who lost their lives to the battle against COVID-19 in the U.S.

New York continues to remain one of the worst-affected states by COVID-19 in the U.S. So far, 18,000 people have lost their lives to coronavirus in New York City alone, leaving funeral homes overwhelmed with the corpses.

The Borough President of Brooklyn, Eric Adams, said that even though investigations are on concerning the funeral homes’ action to store the bodies in trucks with no insulation and infection control practice, the least that is required now is trucks filled with bodies lining the streets.

One of the officials is even said to say that the funeral homes’ refrigerator stopped working and this is the reason why they put the deceased in rented trucks.