Florida Morgues 'Out of Space' For Bodies, Oxygen Crunch in Hospitals Again Amid COVID Outbreak

Months after battling the worst bouts of COVID-19, the United States seems to be witnessing a horrific rerun of 2020. Morgues are out of space, hospitals are out of oxygen and many countries still under siege.

Florida has reported an average of 227 Covid deaths a day this past week, according to a New York Times database. The average new known cases (23,314 a day) went 30 per cent higher than the state¡¯s previous peak in January.

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The US, as a whole, is also seeing a spike in cases, mainly due to the highly contagious delta variant. The total number of people hospitalised due to the virus in the US at present crossed 1 lakh on Thursday. This is the highest in eight months. The country saw a 12% increase in new cases over the past week, but deaths were up 23%, reported NBC News.

Only 2 days of oxygen left

Dozens of Florida hospitals could quickly run out of oxygen supplies as the state continues to grapple with this summer's deadly surge of COVID-19. A Florida Hospital Association survey released Wednesday found that 68 hospitals in the state have oxygen supplies of fewer than 48 hours, with almost half having supplies of less than 36 hours.

Oxygen demands have skyrocketed recently due to the spread of the Delta variant. There were 16,550 confirmed COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Florida as of Thursday, according to the Florida Hospital Association.

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"This is not like running out of masks, right? This is life saving," Mary Mayhew, the group's president, told WFME. "And right now we're focused on how to make sure that does not happen. And so hospitals have been raising these concerns, with the state, with the division of emergency management, with the governor's office, and have raised these concerns federally."

No space for bodies

In Orange County region of Florida, non-profit health organisation AdventHealth, which operates the largest hospital system there, reached capacity at its morgues.

Adding that the staff have started using rented coolers, the organisation told WFTV9: ¡°These coolers are quickly becoming filled also.¡± The need to hold bodies for longer is also because funeral homes are working beyond capacity.

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A local news channel in the city of Tampa reported such a backlog at a local funeral home that bodies have been ¡°stacked to the ceiling¡±.

The situation was put in context by Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, a health economist who is a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, in a Twitter thread.

?In Florida, crematories are so overwhelmed with the deceased that bodies are ¡°stacked to the ceiling¡±. There¡¯s an influx of bodies like never seen before¡ªworse than last year. Crematoriums in Orange County are begging for Florida to ¡°supply some refrigeration¡±. @WFLA #COVID19? pic.twitter.com/Ji2FX3qbfl

¡ª Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) August 25, 2021

He referred to the situation of a few months ago in India. Retweeting his own tweet from April 28 in which a family in India is seen transporting a body on a scooter, he said, ¡°Don¡¯t let what happened in India during its #DeltaVariant surge happen to the US. But we are approaching India level crisis in Florida¡­¡±

Florida breaks record for Covid hospitalisations

There are now more than 17,000 people hospitalised with the virus in Florida, reported US News. Covid-related hospital admissions tripled in the past month in the state.

A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida has broken a previous record for current hospitalisations set more than a year ago before vaccines were available.

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The Sunshine State had 10,207 people hospitalised with confirmed Covid-19 cases, according to data reported to the US department of health and human services.

The previous record was from July 23, 2020, more than a half-year before vaccinations started becoming widespread, when Florida had 10,170 hospitalisations, according to the Florida Hospital Association.