US Covid Surge: Florida Morgues ‘Out of Space for Bodies’, Oxygen Crunch in Hospitals

Amid a new Covid-19 surge in the US, the state of Florida is going through a major crisis as hospitals and funeral homes are running out of space for bodies. Worse, oxygen shortage is leading to fears that there may be more avoidable deaths.

Florida has reported an average of 227 Covid deaths a day this past week, according to a New York Times database. The average new known cases (23,314 a day) went 30 per cent higher than the state’s previous peak in January. There are now more than 17,000 people hospitalised with the virus in Florida, reported US News. Covid-related hospital admissions tripled in the past month in the state.

The US, as a whole, is also seeing a spike in cases, mainly due to the highly contagious delta variant. The total number of people hospitalised due to the virus in the US at present crossed 1 lakh on Thursday. This is the highest in eight months. The country saw a 12% increase in new cases over the past week, but deaths were up 23%, reported NBC News.

Bodies ‘stacked to the ceiling’

In Orange County region of Florida, non-profit health organisation AdventHealth, which operates the largest hospital system there, reached capacity at its morgues.

Adding that the staff have started using rented coolers, the organisation told WFTV9: “These coolers are quickly becoming filled also.”

The need to hold bodies for longer is also because funeral homes are working beyond capacity. A local news channel in the city of Tampa reported such a backlog at a local funeral home that bodies have been “stacked to the ceiling”.

‘Approaching India level crisis’

The situation was put in context by Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, a health economist who is a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, in a Twitter thread.

He referred to the situation of a few months ago in India. Retweeting his own tweet from April 28 in which a family in India is seen transporting a body on a scooter, he said, “Don’t let what happened in India during its #DeltaVariant surge happen to the US. But we are approaching India level crisis in Florida…”

Vaccine not taken, mask ‘not mandated’

Meanwhile, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has refused to abandon his position against “restrictions” such as masks. He has even banned any move to make masks mandatory. He is opposed to schools requiring masks as well, though some schools have ignored his argument and enforced a mask mandate. He has repeatedly claimed that the Covid pandemic is overstated.

At hospitals, staff are overwhelmed and frustrated about people not taking precautions or even the vaccine.

Nurse Jamie Lillo at St Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa Bay told NBC that she took four patients to the morgue in one night. “I was mad… We could have avoided this whole wave if more people in our country had gone and just gotten two shots,” she reportedly said.

Several doctors in Palm Beach County even held a press conference on Monday to urge people to get vaccinated. Dr Chirag Patel, assistant chief medical officer of UF Health Jacksonville, told NYT that patients hospitalised now are younger and have fewer existing ailments. Nearly all of them were unvaccinated, he said. “Of those who have died, more than 90 per cent were not immunised,” Dr Patel underlined.

In a heart-wrenching story reported recently, a woman from Jacksonville had lost her two sons to the infection within 12 hours of each other. Both Aaron Jaggi (35) and Free Jaggi (41), who lived with their mother Lisa Brandon, had not taken the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a report by News4Jax.

Short of oxygen

It is feared that the situation will get worse as oxygen, one of the key aids to keep Covid patients stable, is in short supply.

Orlando city’s mayor has even asked residents to conserve water so that there is less strain on supply of liquid oxygen because it is used to purify local drinking water as well as to treat Covid patients, the Times reported. The logic is that if people use less water, the liquid oxygen could be diverted to hospitals for medical use.

The situation is underlined in data released by the Florida Hospital Association. Its survey released on Wednesday found that 68 hospitals in the state had oxygen supplies of fewer than 48 hours, with almost half having supplies of less than 36 hours, reported Newsweek. Many got supply at the last minute after making frantic calls to suppliers and authorities.

“This is not like running out of masks, right? This is life saving,” Mary Mayhew, the association president, told local channel WFME. Hospitals have been raising these concerns at the federal (central government) level too, she added.

(With agency inputs)

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