Coronavirus deaths outpace funerals in New York City

New York(ANN)-Coronavirus, (COVID-19), deaths in New York City have outpaced the number of funerals held there, according to a recent report in US media.

According a Yahoo News reported on Saturday that the spike in COVID-19 deaths has overwhelmed city-run morgues, funeral homes, crematoriums and private cemeteries in the most populous city in the United States.

According to the report the number of fatalities in New York City had reached a total of more than 11,000 this week.

The report said the COVID-19 disease had “disproportionately” affected low-income and minority communities, leading to more burials on the country’s largest public burial ground, Hart island.

Hart Island has been New York City’s public burial ground for more than 150 years.

Most of the bodies that go there are unclaimed or belong to those whose poor families were not able to afford a burial.

However, not all of those buried at Hart Island during the pandemic are people who had no next of kin or could not afford a funeral.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio revealed some of the bodies were buried there temporarily till the city could figure out a way to return the bodies to families.

The “temporary burials” will continue until the crisis passes and families will have the opportunity to claim and relocate the remains of their loved ones, he told reporters last week.

Burials on the island have increased to about 24 a day, according to city officials running the operations on the island.

Based on an ancient law referred to as the “right of sepulcher,” the next of kin of the deceased have the right to choose the final burial place of the remains.

In New York City, bodies of the unclaimed deceased have to buried. A violation of this right and burial without the permission of the next of kin could lead to a lawsuit against the perpetrator.

The number of people infected with the coronavirus in the US, which has suffered the greatest number of reported COVID-19 fatalities, is far higher than previously thought, according to a new study.

The study by Stanford University in the state of California, which released Friday, tested samples from 3,330 people in Santa Clara County and found the coronavirus was 50 to 85 times more common than official figures indicated.

At the time of the study, Santa Clara County, with a population of about of 2 million, had 1,094 confirmed coronavirus cases, resulting in 50 deaths.

The study, which was conducted by identifying antibodies in healthy individuals through a finger prick test, marks the first large-scale study of its kind, researchers said.

Based on the rate of people who have antibodies, between 48,000 and 81,000 people had been infected in the county, a figure about 50 to 80 times higher than the 1,094 confirmed cases reported so far.

The study estimated that 2.49 percent to 4.16 percent of people in Santa Clara Country had been infected with Covid-19 by April 1.

“Our findings suggest that there is somewhere between 50- and 80-fold more infections in our county than what’s known by the number of cases than are reported by our department of public health,” Dr. Eran Bendavid, the associate professor of medicine at Stanford University who led the study, told ABC News.

“We have good confidence that we’re getting reliable information on the population. And that can be done because we know what proportion of the people who are positive we’re missing using this test,” said Bendavid.

Over the 24-hour period to Friday morning, 95 people died in California from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the most since the pandemic began. That brings the total fatalities to 1,037.

The United States, with the world’s third-largest population, has now suffered the greatest number of reported fatalities from the coronavirus, ahead of Italy and Spain.

More than 700,000 people in the US have been infected with the coronavirus and over 35,000 have died as of Saturday morning, according to a Reuters tally.

Over 90 percent of Americans have been under stay-at-home orders to contain the virus, forcing companies, shops and restaurants to close their doors, throwing some 22 million people out of work.

President Donald Trump, who is under immense pressure for his slow and inadequate response to the outbreak, is pushing to reopen the US economy.

The majority of Americans are critical of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and believe the worst is yet to come from the crisis, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

The survey, which was released on Thursday, shows 73 percent of Americans say the “worst is still to come” from the coronavirus outbreak, compared with 26 percent who say the “worst is behind us.” according report.