Coronavirus: Italian town buries patients every 30 minutes

Coronavirus has ravaged Bergamo, a town in the Lombardy region of Italy, where patients are now buried every thirty minutes.

Giacomo Angeloni, councillor in charge of cemeteries in Bergamo, said funerals take place every half an hour.

“We are facing an emergency there is no doubting that. We are having a burial every half an hour,” he said.

“We had 18 on Saturday, 44 over Sunday and Monday, 33 on Tuesday and 51 on Wednesday. We’ve had to close Bergamo cemetery for the time being to cope.

“We are using churches as temporary mortuaries. I have to thank my staff for what they are doing in the face of this tragedy. Certainly, we never imagined having to deal with an emergency on this level.”

According to Daily Mail, the obituary section of a local newspaper has expanded from a single page to 20 following the deaths of at least 146 in the city within one week, as a result of the virus.

Italy detected its first three cases of the virus in late January. Last Tuesday, the country recorded the highest single toll from coronavirus following the deaths of 168 people in less than 24 hours.

The government has placed the whole country of about 60 million people under quarantine as 368 new deaths were recorded due to the virus, while total number of deaths increased to 1,809. Also, the number of confirmed cases in the country has risen to 24,747.

According to local authorities, Bergamo is the highest hit in the region as local hospitals can no longer admit more patients and bodies of victims kept in churches are awaiting burial.

On Sunday, global updates showed that there are about 152,428 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, while over 5,720 have died. About 64,000 people have recovered from the virus across the world.