Up to 17 dead piled up in an improvised mortuary: this is a new tragedy linked to the pandemic which appeared this week in a retirement home in New Jersey, pushing the governor of this state to demand accountability.
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Police in the small town of Andover, some 100 km west of New York, did not immediately confirm these figures. But according to the New York Times , it discovered on Monday, after an anonymous complaint, 17 bodies piled up in the small morgue of this establishment, the Andover Sub-Acute and Rehabilitation Unit, one of the largest residences for the elderly in this state. These 17 deaths are part of 68 recent deaths recorded in this establishment. Of the 68 dead, 26 tested positive for the coronavirus, the newspaper said.
" The staff were clearly overwhelmed, and probably in short supply, " said local police chief Eric Danielson at CNN. " I am heartbroken at the tragic information concerning individuals who died of the coronavirus epidemic at the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center, " replied Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey, on Twitter. " I am shocked that we authorized the piling of bodies in an improvised morgue ". "I have asked the New Jersey prosecutor to review this case, and to review the long-term care facilities in New Jersey that have recorded a disproportionate number of deaths since the start of the epidemic," a- he added.
Staff issues
This drama, in the American state with the most coronavirus deaths after New York, illustrates the dramatic situation in some retirement homes in the face of an epidemic that particularly affects the elderly.
In a statement posted on Thursday on the Andover police Facebook page, one of the co-owners of the establishment, Chaim Scheinbaum, argues that " problems of delays and night schedules during the weekend had contributed the presence of more dead than usual ”in the morgue of the establishment. However, he denied that there were 17 bodies, ensuring that at no time on Monday, the morgue, which he said could contain up to 12 bodies, had counted " more than 15 ". He also acknowledged personnel problems, saying that on April 8 he received a list of possible recruits, and then started to contact them.
He also assured that he has now found " solid staff ", including 12 nurses for 420 residents. Chaim Scheinbaum did not say how many people at the facility tested positive for the virus, but according to the New York Times , 76 residents tested positive and 41 staff were sick with the virus. In New York as in New Jersey, the authorities have promised precise data on the situation of retirement homes. According to the NBC channel, citing health services from different American states, the epidemic had killed 5,670 people in retirement homes on Wednesday, out of nearly 30,000 dead in total in the United States.
