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Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://www.sinembargo.mx/24-06-2020/3809649
CHRONICLE | They came due to atypical pneumonia and then COVID-19. Bodies quintupled in funeral homes
By Carlos Vargas Sep?lveda
However
June 24, 2020 8:15 pm
MEXICO SECTION
Compared to their May 2019 numbers, almost five times as many cremations took place at the Mexico City Memorial San ?ngel in May 2020. They went from 29 (2019) to 144 (2020). It was in late March that "atypical pneumonias" increased, and then the numbers multiplied with confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Mexico City, June 24 (SinEmbargo) .– It was March 2020. From Bergamo, Italy, there were reports of hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients; in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the bodies of the victims remained in the houses due to the lack of space in the morgues; in New York, United States, a mandatory quarantine was established that would not be able to stop what was already the new epicenter of the tragedy. All these news traveled the world and reached the gardens of the San ?ngel Memorial, in the ?lvaro Obreg?n Mayor's Office in Mexico City, where the number of cremations would soon be detonated: first for “atypical pneumonias”, and then for confirmed cases of coronavirus .
Marco Antonio Morales's glasses are clouded and then the mask he wears on his face mask. He carries with him a bottle of antibacterial gel that he uses over and over again. Strictly follow the rules established to control the progress of COVID-19. And how not to do it? He saw firsthand how death records nearly quintupled when comparing May 2019 and May 2020 at Memorial San ?ngel, the funeral home of which he is the general manager.
Every year, Marco says, in the San ?ngel Memorial they begin to receive more bodies from November or December. It is normal that in those months the number increases due to the arrival of the winter season, he says. Many elderly people die from pneumonia or cold-associated illness, he notes. "December, January, February, still a little bit of March are times when there are more people dying."
"What started happening here, after they reported the first death from COVID-19 on March 18, was that pneumonia began to arrive that we could not identify to be associated with COVID, because they had not been tested. Such unusual cases began to arrive ... Normally, in the second half of March, pneumonia begins to drop. Not now, now it started to rise. At the end of March we had many, many atypical pneumonias. The first case of COVID arrived around March 20, ”he says.
“In March it rose 10 percent, more or less, compared to March last year. In April it rose by about 30 percent, 40 percent more, but already in May it was the boom of people dying from COVID, "he adds. The funeral director assures that in May 2019 they had 29 cremation services, an average of one per day, and that in May 2020 there were 144 cremations, that is, 4.9 times more. Most of the cases, he points out, were due to COVID-19. It was a drastic change.
SING TO DEATH
Mexico sings to death. If someone loses his life, the drums rumble and the guitars play. "Our songs, sayings, parties and popular reflections manifest unequivocally that death does not scare us because" life has cured us of dread, "" wrote Octavio Paz in Todos Santos, Day of the Dead. “There is nothing more joyous than a Mexican party, but there is also nothing sadder. The night of partying is also a night of mourning ”, added the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the San ?ngel Memorial, for example, there are families who want to bring mariachis and violins to pay tribute to the fallen. Now, in COVID-19 days, that cannot be done. In some cases there is no longer room to even say goodbye.
“Unfortunately today these customs have to be left aside. It is sad because people cannot say goodbye. It is difficult to explain to someone that a relative died. It is very strong, very hard. The idea at the Memorial is to preserve life. We do not want them to become infected because there is a risk that they will return not as assistants, but as protagonists. Each head is a world, but the idea is to put them on track to protect them, ”says Marco Morales.
At the San ?ngel Memorial, which has been in operation for 20 years, today no candles are allowed in which more than ten people are present. The facilities are kept sanitized to avoid any contagion. Special measures of hygiene and healthy distance were adopted among the workers since it became known that SARS-CoV-2 was transiting the world. So far there have been no positive cases among the staff, and Marco says he hopes to continue like this.
"During the entire time of the pandemic we have been working daily, we cannot stop, we are a funeral parlor that is supporting Mexico City in order to cremate the bodies of low-income people. We joined that program with the City Council and the Government of the City of Mexico to support. We give them the free service ”, Morales relates.
“We have tried to make prevention go home. It does not help that we do sanitation and mitigation here, if someone comes to your house and does not put gel or do not wash their hands, or do not wear face masks when going to the market. In general, we have tried to make staff use protection as a philosophy. Here we cannot say, as many people do: "There is no virus." No. Here we see the cases of people who have died. It is not that the Chinese invented it, or that they want to get the liquid from our knees. No, we say forcefully: the virus kills people. Here we have cared for people who have died from the virus, people who had diabetes, hypertension, overweight ... The virus is complicated, "he adds.
JUST JUNE
Flowers, lights, photographs, candles, messages, memories ... Everything that enters the niches can be seen from the windows that illustrate the corridors of the funeral parlor. Marco walks through rooms full of coffins and highlights the attachment Mexicans have with death. He insists that the saddest thing in the days of COVID-19 is that farewells have to be suppressed. And thousands of families go through the same thing. According to the latest report shared by Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, 5,451 people with the coronavirus have died in Mexico City alone.
Marco puts on antibacterial gel again and shows the cremation oven. It says that today (June 17) it is turned off because it is undergoing maintenance. Then he says that the funeral home had to invest, after the pandemic, in a special fireplace to avoid the black smoke caused by the bags with which the bodies are put into the incinerator. It is prohibited, he points out, to open the containers that arrive at the Memorial to prevent the disease from spreading. It also ensures that the measures adopted in the country have had an effect on the numbers. Although the darkest days were reached in May, by June it detected a decrease in the number of deaths.
On June 17, the date on which Marco Morales allowed SinEmbargo to tour the facilities of the San ?ngel Memorial, 60 cremations had been carried out in the place since the last day of May, of which about 50 were by COVID-19. It's still going on, but it's already down. "It is decreasing. The urgency is being minimized, although we do not doubt that it will continue, there are people who are still contagious, "says the general manager of the funeral home.
“Here we have the philosophy that we are all equal in life or in death. In the end we will end up in the same direction: in a coffin, in a grave, in a crematorium. We all go to the same place physically, ”says Marco. Then he asks that everyone maintain the measures so that there are no more infections and the curve, in the end, goes down in Mexico:
“Nothing is going to happen because one year you don't go to the movies, nothing is going to happen because you don't go dancing. If there is no vaccine or care protocol that assures us that nothing serious will happen to us, we must be careful. Say that they are young, that they do not have comorbidities, but there are people with diabetes, hypertension, that are older ... This has to do with solidarity. I can say: I exercise, I run, I live a healthy life, but I must be aware that I can be infected and, being asymptomatic, bring the disease to someone who may die. ”
Mexico City will remain until Sunday, June 28 at Red Light, a color that represents the moment of maximum risk from the pandemic.
CHRONICLE | They came due to atypical pneumonia and then COVID-19. Bodies quintupled in funeral homes
By Carlos Vargas Sep?lveda
However
June 24, 2020 8:15 pm
MEXICO SECTION
Compared to their May 2019 numbers, almost five times as many cremations took place at the Mexico City Memorial San ?ngel in May 2020. They went from 29 (2019) to 144 (2020). It was in late March that "atypical pneumonias" increased, and then the numbers multiplied with confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Mexico City, June 24 (SinEmbargo) .– It was March 2020. From Bergamo, Italy, there were reports of hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients; in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the bodies of the victims remained in the houses due to the lack of space in the morgues; in New York, United States, a mandatory quarantine was established that would not be able to stop what was already the new epicenter of the tragedy. All these news traveled the world and reached the gardens of the San ?ngel Memorial, in the ?lvaro Obreg?n Mayor's Office in Mexico City, where the number of cremations would soon be detonated: first for “atypical pneumonias”, and then for confirmed cases of coronavirus .
Marco Antonio Morales's glasses are clouded and then the mask he wears on his face mask. He carries with him a bottle of antibacterial gel that he uses over and over again. Strictly follow the rules established to control the progress of COVID-19. And how not to do it? He saw firsthand how death records nearly quintupled when comparing May 2019 and May 2020 at Memorial San ?ngel, the funeral home of which he is the general manager.
Every year, Marco says, in the San ?ngel Memorial they begin to receive more bodies from November or December. It is normal that in those months the number increases due to the arrival of the winter season, he says. Many elderly people die from pneumonia or cold-associated illness, he notes. "December, January, February, still a little bit of March are times when there are more people dying."
"What started happening here, after they reported the first death from COVID-19 on March 18, was that pneumonia began to arrive that we could not identify to be associated with COVID, because they had not been tested. Such unusual cases began to arrive ... Normally, in the second half of March, pneumonia begins to drop. Not now, now it started to rise. At the end of March we had many, many atypical pneumonias. The first case of COVID arrived around March 20, ”he says.
“In March it rose 10 percent, more or less, compared to March last year. In April it rose by about 30 percent, 40 percent more, but already in May it was the boom of people dying from COVID, "he adds. The funeral director assures that in May 2019 they had 29 cremation services, an average of one per day, and that in May 2020 there were 144 cremations, that is, 4.9 times more. Most of the cases, he points out, were due to COVID-19. It was a drastic change.
SING TO DEATH
Mexico sings to death. If someone loses his life, the drums rumble and the guitars play. "Our songs, sayings, parties and popular reflections manifest unequivocally that death does not scare us because" life has cured us of dread, "" wrote Octavio Paz in Todos Santos, Day of the Dead. “There is nothing more joyous than a Mexican party, but there is also nothing sadder. The night of partying is also a night of mourning ”, added the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the San ?ngel Memorial, for example, there are families who want to bring mariachis and violins to pay tribute to the fallen. Now, in COVID-19 days, that cannot be done. In some cases there is no longer room to even say goodbye.
“Unfortunately today these customs have to be left aside. It is sad because people cannot say goodbye. It is difficult to explain to someone that a relative died. It is very strong, very hard. The idea at the Memorial is to preserve life. We do not want them to become infected because there is a risk that they will return not as assistants, but as protagonists. Each head is a world, but the idea is to put them on track to protect them, ”says Marco Morales.
At the San ?ngel Memorial, which has been in operation for 20 years, today no candles are allowed in which more than ten people are present. The facilities are kept sanitized to avoid any contagion. Special measures of hygiene and healthy distance were adopted among the workers since it became known that SARS-CoV-2 was transiting the world. So far there have been no positive cases among the staff, and Marco says he hopes to continue like this.
"During the entire time of the pandemic we have been working daily, we cannot stop, we are a funeral parlor that is supporting Mexico City in order to cremate the bodies of low-income people. We joined that program with the City Council and the Government of the City of Mexico to support. We give them the free service ”, Morales relates.
“We have tried to make prevention go home. It does not help that we do sanitation and mitigation here, if someone comes to your house and does not put gel or do not wash their hands, or do not wear face masks when going to the market. In general, we have tried to make staff use protection as a philosophy. Here we cannot say, as many people do: "There is no virus." No. Here we see the cases of people who have died. It is not that the Chinese invented it, or that they want to get the liquid from our knees. No, we say forcefully: the virus kills people. Here we have cared for people who have died from the virus, people who had diabetes, hypertension, overweight ... The virus is complicated, "he adds.
JUST JUNE
Flowers, lights, photographs, candles, messages, memories ... Everything that enters the niches can be seen from the windows that illustrate the corridors of the funeral parlor. Marco walks through rooms full of coffins and highlights the attachment Mexicans have with death. He insists that the saddest thing in the days of COVID-19 is that farewells have to be suppressed. And thousands of families go through the same thing. According to the latest report shared by Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, 5,451 people with the coronavirus have died in Mexico City alone.
Marco puts on antibacterial gel again and shows the cremation oven. It says that today (June 17) it is turned off because it is undergoing maintenance. Then he says that the funeral home had to invest, after the pandemic, in a special fireplace to avoid the black smoke caused by the bags with which the bodies are put into the incinerator. It is prohibited, he points out, to open the containers that arrive at the Memorial to prevent the disease from spreading. It also ensures that the measures adopted in the country have had an effect on the numbers. Although the darkest days were reached in May, by June it detected a decrease in the number of deaths.
On June 17, the date on which Marco Morales allowed SinEmbargo to tour the facilities of the San ?ngel Memorial, 60 cremations had been carried out in the place since the last day of May, of which about 50 were by COVID-19. It's still going on, but it's already down. "It is decreasing. The urgency is being minimized, although we do not doubt that it will continue, there are people who are still contagious, "says the general manager of the funeral home.
“Here we have the philosophy that we are all equal in life or in death. In the end we will end up in the same direction: in a coffin, in a grave, in a crematorium. We all go to the same place physically, ”says Marco. Then he asks that everyone maintain the measures so that there are no more infections and the curve, in the end, goes down in Mexico:
“Nothing is going to happen because one year you don't go to the movies, nothing is going to happen because you don't go dancing. If there is no vaccine or care protocol that assures us that nothing serious will happen to us, we must be careful. Say that they are young, that they do not have comorbidities, but there are people with diabetes, hypertension, that are older ... This has to do with solidarity. I can say: I exercise, I run, I live a healthy life, but I must be aware that I can be infected and, being asymptomatic, bring the disease to someone who may die. ”
Mexico City will remain until Sunday, June 28 at Red Light, a color that represents the moment of maximum risk from the pandemic.