Too many dead for Covid, in Los Angeles there is a shortage of coffins: there is no wood to build them, refrigerator-containers are rented

The United States continues to set sad records in the pandemic, so much so that the Los Angeles funeral home runs out of caskets for the victims. On Saturday the country registered 277,346 infections, now exceeding 20 million cases, while deaths exceed 350,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. And another 115,000 Americans could die from Covid in the next month, according to some projections. By comparison, more than 77,500 people died in December, the month with the deadliest death toll since the start of the pandemic.

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The vaccination campaign launched on December 14, meanwhile, continues amidst chaos and delays and has so far only touched 4.2 million people, compared to the 20 million expected by the end of 2020. The most Ravaged by the virus is Los Angeles, overwhelmed by the post-Christmas wave with an average of more than 16,000 cases per day in the last week, with Saturday’s record of 19,063 infections. Hospitals are collapsing and Covid-19 victims are increasing at such an alarming rate that funeral homes are running out of pine trees to build coffins. A funeral home in the city has even rented a 50-foot refrigerated truck to house the bodies while they wait to find a solution. “We are in crisis and the situation is desperate,” said Magda Maldonado, who runs Continental Funeral Homes.

“The funeral home no longer has space to receive the corpses. They all work seven days a week plus overtime. We are exhausted. But there is also another problem and it is the shortage of pine trees for coffins. “Timber is scarce, especially pine, which is the cheapest,” said Auriel Suarez, owner of Universal Caskets Manufacturing Corporation in East Los Angeles. “In 52 years of activity, I have never seen anything like this,” he added.

California has become in recent weeks the epicenter of the pandemic with more than 24,000 deaths, while the entire country is also concerned about the news of the hospitalization of a well-known CNN presenter: Larry King, 87, has been longer of a week fighting the virus. at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.