Mexico is reopening, but those handling the dead say the Coronavirus epidemic there is far from over. Crematoriums and funeral homes are overwhelmed, and mortality data shows the death toll is far higher than official numbers.
Mexico is reopening, but those handling the dead say the Coronavirus epidemic there is far from over. Crematoriums and funeral homes are overwhelmed, and mortality data shows the death toll is far higher than official numbers.
new video loaded:Funeral Homes in Mexico Reveal Coronavirus’s Hidden Death Toll
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Funeral Homes in Mexico Reveal Coronavirus’s Hidden Death Toll
Mexico is reopening, but those handling the dead say the Coronavirus epidemic there is far from over. Crematoriums and funeral homes are overwhelmed, and mortality data shows the death toll is far higher than official numbers.
On the outskirts of Mexico City, an 84-year-old man struggles to breathe. Paramedics hoist him into a capsule for safe transport. This neighborhood is a hotspot for coronavirus. At the hospital, the patient’s wife is forced to wait outside. Just the day before, she says she lost a son to Covid-19. Like most Covid deaths, his body was supposed to go straight to a crematorium. Only, there’s a wait. Crematoriums are backed up, sometimes for days. The government has consistently underestimated the death toll here. But handlers of the dead offer evidence that the region is becoming an epicenter for the pandemic. And it’s getting worse. This is Nezahualcóyotl, one of Mexico City’s most densely populated suburbs. During the months of lockdown, many people here couldn’t afford to stay home and not work, or just didn’t want to. And the virus is hitting hard. The wait for cremation is so long some families rent temporary interments, like these. Funeral services barely keep up with demand. Uriel Bizuet maintains death records of all his clients. These death records can tell us a lot about the virus’s spread, and suggest Covid-19 has been more deadly than the government admits. For instance, this death on March 5 by acute lung failure, a hallmark symptom of coronavirus, occurred 13 days before Mexico announced the country’s first Covid death. Bizuet wonders if the epidemic arrived earlier than the government said. In March, the cause of death could have been influenza — without a test, it’s impossible to know. To date, there are more than 11,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths in Mexico. But the true toll is likely much higher. Mario Romero Zavala is a data analyst and software engineer in Mexico City. He recently analyzed death certificates for the city, and found the excess mortality — that is the number of deaths above the historical average — showed 8,000 additional deaths in April and May. “Given our study, we can’t say that all the excess mortality is directly attributed to Covid. But there’s a huge difference — we’re seeing like a four times difference between what’s the official data for confirmed Covid cases of deceased persons in Mexico City versus the excess mortality in Mexico City. The people are given the message that somehow we’re past the epidemic, and this is not true. This is absolutely not true, and it’s a very concerning message to be given out.” Publicly, health authorities keep saying, ‘We’ve made it through the worst.’ This was Mexico’s deputy health minister a month ago. Now medical experts believe that the worst may be just beginning. Health analysts at the University of Washington project the epidemic could kill as many as 45,000 people in Mexico by the end of summer. This week Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, began easing restrictions to get the country back to work. Amid these mixed messages, conspiracy theories have caught fire. Doctors told Miguel Angel Gil his father died of Covid-19, but he refuses to believe it. There’s no evidence to support such rumors, and they complicate efforts to fight the epidemic. Gil says he slipped money to a funeral worker for a visitation with his father’s body. Government protocols for handling Covid cases prohibit that kind of contact, and advise that all corpses be immediately cremated. But many families find ways around them as they aren’t enforceable. Juana Parada Flores, an indigenous Mazahua, says she’s following the rules, and hires a funeral service to transport her father’s body from the morgue to a crematorium, or so she claims. Ms. Parada asks us not to follow her. But I learned later that she did not cremate the body after all. Like the family who paid extra for a funeral, she instead drove her father’s coffin two hours outside the city and held a traditional burial service for the community. A Reuters videographer captured dozens of people attending. This is the sort of potential super-spreader event that health authorities want to avoid. As Mexico reopens, the president’s message is that even if danger still exists, the worst has passed. But the effect may be the opposite: that the worst is yet to come.
Funeral Homes in Mexico Reveal Coronavirus’s Hidden Death Toll
Mexico is reopening, but those handling the dead say the Coronavirus epidemic there is far from over. Crematoriums and funeral homes are overwhelmed, and mortality data shows the death toll is far higher than official numbers.
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