Florida set another grim record on Tuesday with nearly 200 more COVID-19 deaths recorded overnight, but for the past few days a sinister sight outside a funeral home has been sending a chill through a Miami-area city, a refrigerated trailer to store bodies.
Rumors that the bodies of coronavirus victims were being stored there, and unfounded fears that the bodies could spread the disease, have sparked several protests in recent days outside the San Jose Funeral Home in Hialeah.
“We went to the funeral home to ask about it and they told us that they were in capacity and that they had bodies infected with COVID-19 that they were storing in that container,” Liliana Vázquez Acosta, who lives near the funeral home and who first sounded the alarm, he told The Miami Herald.
Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández acknowledged that the remains were being stored in the trailer, but said that “the refrigerated container does not have the bodies of people who died from COVID-19.” He said the trailer was moved Tuesday to a fenced-in area elsewhere on the property that is out of sight of neighbors.
“This was never a danger to anyone,” he told NBC News. “The Hialeah Health Department dealt with all of this from the beginning. I understand the concerns of people living nearby, but this is a side effect of the times we live in.”
María Villatoro, vice president of operations at the funeral home, did not confirm whether any of the bodies stored in the trailer were from people who died from the coronavirus, but said Tuesday that they want to be good neighbors.
“While there is no risk, what we have shown to health officials, elected officials, and the police when they inspected the facility, out of a great deal of understanding and compassion for our neighbors, we have worked with the Mayor and other officials to change the location of our special care center away from our neighbors on the other side of our property, “he said in a statement.
Even if remnants of COVID-19 remain in the trailer, they pose little danger to the living, according to the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 is primarily transmitted “when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or speaks,” according to the guidelines. “This transmission route is not a concern when handling human remains or performing post-mortem procedures. It is possible for a person to get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus and then touching their mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes. This is not believed to be the main way of spreading the virus. “
The death toll in Florida rose to 6,240 on Tuesday after the state health department reported a record 191 additional deaths, NBC News reported. That is the highest 24-hour number since the start of the pandemic.
In other developments:
- The death toll in the United States from the pandemic increased more than 150,000, confirmed NBC News. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 150,104 deaths reported from 4,340,149 cases. The United States leads the world, by a wide margin, in the number of Covid-19 deaths and cases, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
- Texas changed the way it records coronavirus deaths and the result was a massive nightly increase of 1,178 deaths. That brings Texas’ death toll to nearly 6,300, according to the latest NBC News count. “The Texas Department of State Health Services now counts deaths marked on death certificates as caused by COVID-19,” reported The Texas Tribune. “Previously, the state relied on local and regional public health departments to verify and report deaths.”
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Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Dr. Anthony Fauci in a Saturday Night Live sketch earned him a surprising Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series category. Pitt ended the cold quarantine of April 25 by opening his wig and saying, “And to the real Dr. Fauci, thank you for your calm and clarity at this puzzling moment. And thank you medical workers, first responders and their families for being on the front line. “Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was the target of an attempt by the White House to discredit him because his more sober evaluations of the Pandemics have often collided with the more optimistic outlook that President Donald Trump has been pressing.
