'A generation has died': Italian province struggles to bury its coronavirus dead
The Guardian
Coffins pile up and corpses are sealed off in homes as Bergamo’s funeral firms are overwhelmed
Angela Giuffrida in Orvieto and Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo
Published: 09:05 Thursday, 19 March 2020
Coffins awaiting burial are lining up in churches and the corpses of those who died at home are being kept in sealed-off rooms for days as funeral services struggle to cope in Bergamo, the Italian province hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic...across Italy, all buried or cremated without ceremony. Those who die in hospital do so alone, with their belongings left in bags beside coffins before being collected by funeral workers.
In Bergamo, a province of 1.2 million people in the Lombardy region, where 1,959 of the total deaths in the country have taken place, 4,305 people had contracted the virus by Wednesday. The death toll across the province is unclear, but the situation has become so intense that on Wednesday night the army was brought in to move 65 coffins from the cemetery in Bergamo town and take them to Modena and Bologna in Emilia-Romagna.
CFB, the area’s largest funeral director, has carried out almost 600 burials or cremations since 1 March. “In a normal month we would do about 120,” said Antonio Ricciardi, the president of CFB. “A generation has died in just over two weeks. We’ve never seen anything like this and it just makes you cry.”
There are about 80 funeral companies across Bergamo, each receiving dozens of calls an hour. A shortage of coffins as providers struggle to keep up with demand and funeral workers becoming infected with the virus are also hampering preparations.
More here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/generation-has-died-italian-province-struggles-bury-coronavirus-dead?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Poor Italy 
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