Macabre upshots of COVID-19 rampage in Romania

In the past several days, the demand for coffins increased by 50% in Romania. Some working in this sector said that in October alone their sales increased as never before, writes Cristian Gherasim, Bucharest correspondent.

This comes as no surprise since COVID 19 has been killing one Romanian every five minutes, the country registering the highest death rate in the world.

Representatives of funeral homes and of those selling coffins said that they have encountered numerous tragedies in the past weeks. They met cases of entire families ending up burying four of their members in the past two weeks alone.

The COVID mortality rate is so high that many have compared it to the most tragic events in Romania’s recent history. The most tragic event was the Collective Club fire of 2015. The fire resulted in 64 deaths, almost nine times less than the COVID deaths recorded on Tuesday, 19 October. At the anti-communist revolution of 1989, 1,166 Romanians died. At the beginning of the week, 561 died in just 24 hours, namely half of the victims registered during the anti-communist revolution which unfolded over a period of 5 days. The 1977 earthquake killed 1,570 people. The 24h death rate from COVID in Romania represent one third of the victims of the worst earthquake in Romania’s recent history.

Town halls across the country are now using excavators to dig burial plots for recently COVID deceased. Authorities in Slobozia, Ialomița county can no longer cope with the large number of dead and have brought an excavator to the cemetery to dig the graves.

Botosani City Hall also rented an excavator to deal with the wave of deaths. The number of deaths in recent days led to increase activity not only in hospitals but also in cemeteries, said local authorities. Gravediggers could no longer cope with the wave of burials, and heavy machinery had to be brought in.

Centralized data show that in the city of Botosani, every month, there were about 50 deaths, but now the number has more than doubled.

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The wave of burials exacerbates the crisis in the cemeteries, so the mayors must find solutions.

Due to the large number of deaths as a result of the new coronavirus, a crisis in cemeteries broke out in Italy this spring as much as it did during the first year of the pandemic. In Rome, in May, there was even a riot of funeral home workers who complained that there were no more places available. Spread over 140 hectares in northern Rome, Prima Porta, the largest cemetery in Italy, had a waiting list stretching all the way back to the beginning of the year.

People in Italy who had someone dying in January said that in May they were still not buried or cremated, and mortuaries at other cemeteries in the city were in similar situations.

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