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“Sorry Mom, I can’t bury you.” Covid and delays in cemeteries

Oberdan Zuccaroli’s gesture is blatant. TO Roma has put up a series of digital posters that will also become billboards: “Sorry mom if I still can’t get you buried”. It tells an experience that is of many in the time of Covid: the difficulty in giving burial to loved ones.

The local news has been telling this for months, not only to Roma. The post-death path has been uphill in Italy since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic. From the moment of admission to hospital there is no contact with family members.

Even after death there are strict rules and long times.

The first thing they ask for mortuaries and funeral homes is whether the person died from Covid or not. In the first case, the process is longer and with greater limitations. The dead person cannot be seen, they take care of the whole hospital and funeral home. For relatives remains the funeral, in a few, but it is not always immediate.

The case reported by Corriere della Sera it is limit. Mr. Zuccaroli’s 85-year-old mother died on March 8. A ninety-year-old aunt also died. Neither has been buried so far. “My mom and aunt died not of Covid, my mother with a heart attack and my aunt from old age, but I have never been able to see them », he explained,« And even today I have not even been able to bring them a flower. I am at the depot of the Flaminio-Prima Porta cemetery, my mother since 8 March and my aunt since 9 January ».

The local news already told it. Especially for Rome. The bodies are waiting for a long time in the deposits. They are waiting for the cremation authorization or an available niche. There is no staff for burials, the administration fails to process the paperwork. Ama, the Roman municipal company, speaks of an increase in numbers that is difficult to manage. From October to February there were 4,330 more deaths than in the same period between 2019 and 2020. «If we continue like this, we will reach 38 thousand deaths at the end of the year. These are frightening numbers that can be traced back more or less directly to Covid, “said the director of the Cemeteries of but, Fabrizio Ippolito.

Only for cremations there is talk of 4000 more in 2021 than in 2020. Cremations are suspended at Prima Porta indefinitely. There are days with a thousand coffins waiting and it often takes more than a week for the burial.

It is not just Rome, it is the Italian cemeteries in difficulty. TO PalermoA few weeks ago, there were more than 800 coffins awaiting burial. They are in the main cemetery of the Sicilian capital and, if the situation continues like this, in June, they could reach more than 2000. The municipality is looking for new land for burials. TO Milano, between December and January, the Lambrate crematorium stopped: it did not allow new entrances, to avoid creating queues for weeks of waiting.

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