The funeral of the dead from Covid-19 turns into big problems

Irina Mnishek

“The morgues are crowded, they said to take the body on the 2nd day... We were 48 in the crematorium! A two-hour live queue of hearse, and it was the middle of the day, and this is only in one crematorium, and there are 3 of them in Moscow! According to statistics, on the day of the funeral there were 27 deaths from pneumonia with confirmed covid. But statistics can be safely multiplied by 3!”, - writes a Facebook user who recently buried her father.

The fact that there are a lot of dead, NI was confirmed by an employee of the City Funeral Service at the hospital in Kommunarka Elena: "The flow of autopsies is just terrible now, the pathologist guys work in 3 shifts, there are a lot of dead. Autopsy now occurs only 3-5 days after death due to the workload of pathologists. After this, a stamp of death is issued. Getting help is not a quick process, you need to be patient and treat this with an understanding of what is happening in the country. Only after this can you agree with the agent and the cemetery about the funeral, ”explained the representative of the City Funeral Service at the hospital in Kommunarka.

To the question “NI”, is the number of deaths really so great now that pathologists cannot cope, the employee of the City Ritual Service at Kommunarka answered briefly: “Yes, very much”.

The body of the deceased from Covid is not presented to relatives. The procedure for the burial of patients with COVID is determined by order of the Ministry of Health. An autopsy is mandatory not only for those who have died with a confirmed diagnosis, but also for patients with suspected COVID-19. At the autopsy, a representative of Rospotrebnadzor should be present. This organization then issues a burial permit. After opening, the body of the deceased is treated with a disinfectant and put into a sealed bag, which is no longer allowed to be opened.

To get a body, as it turned out, is a problem for many. Here is how Selena Sarayu describes this procedure on Facebook : “ Mom died on her husband on April 26 .... The body was transferred to a court morgue, they did this test ... Until there were results, they did not perform an autopsy and did not give a death report .. "We couldn’t bury, as expected. As a result, the morgue workers were stupidly put on their paws, taken away to their mother and finally put to the ground. A few days later the test result came. Negative, clear business! But to arrange such a pain in the neck ..."

The city ritual service at the hospital in Kommunarka told us: “Relatives are given only a closed coffin. So that there is no doubt, they give out a photo of the deceased. In Kommunarka, the coffin is being taken straight to the street. The coffin is hermetically packed, the relatives will not be able to see the body of the deceased. "

Waiting for the turn to come to the deceased to open, execution of all papers, the queue for a death certificate - this is not the limit of all the ordeals that relatives of the deceased have to overcome. By the way, in Moscow in order to pick up the body and bury a person, you need to get a digital pass for a “one-time trip for other purposes”. At the same time, as we were warned on the “hot line”, we must first find out the number of the ritual bus from the funeral agent: the system will ask for the number of the car on which the corpse will be transported to the cemetery.

But that is not all. Not everyone who comes for the body of a deceased relative will leave, for example, from a morgue in Kommunarka, without paying a fine for improper parking. Because there are simply no places for this parking due to the huge number of cars of those who came for the body. And if that - tow trucks are on duty right there.

Here is how Dmitry Sysoev describes it on Facebook : “ Today, he buried his father-in-law, who died from a coronovirus, and was taken from a morgue in Kommunarka. It’s good that both my sons were with me. The elder stayed in the car while the younger and I arranged and received the coffin. Mowgli describes the "law of the jungle" during a disaster - drought when a truce is declared. And even a tiger cannot break it. But Sobyanin is “cooler” than the Sherkhan tiger, namely: at the newest, most modern hospital, at SIDS almost no full-fledged parking. Many people come for coffins. Around the huge and empty EMPTY. And ... "green crocodiles" are hunting for Sobyaninsky pockets for cars that arrived for the corpses of relatives. My eldest son barely left these shameful, insatiable graffiti profiting from corpses. Since we arrived and stood in a row with neighboring cars, of which there are many on the side. The epidemic has already been read for 2 months. Borders shift. Parking at the morgue, at the MAJOR morgue at the MAJOR coronavirus hospital can not do? Or do not want to? And they also want to rob corpses, ”Dmitry Sysoev is indignant.

We asked about the funeral service at the Kommunarka hospital, why parking spaces were not equipped for the relatives of the deceased. “There is a zone where they are not fined. We just need to understand by signs where the parking is, ”they answered. However, this answer is little consistent with angry reviews posted by Facebook visitors to this sad place.

Diana Zaryanova: “They won’t let a ruble go... Apart from the thirst for profit, there is nothing to explain. And this is the creation of foci of infection out of the blue ”

Marina Grekova: "...They are all profitable!!!!!!".

Extradition of a body and a parking ticket is not all. In Moscow and the Moscow region, where the majority of patients with coronavirus and fatal cases, cemeteries were closed for visits in early April, and GBU "Ritual" stopped receiving visitors. We specified on the “hot line” on the organization of the funeral of coronavirus deceased whether all cemeteries in Moscow are now accepting the burial of the dead from COVID-19. “Almost all cemeteries accept, however, some have restrictions prescribed in internal orders. They also heard about this order: in the grave where the deceased from a coronavirus is buried, no one will be able to bury anyone for 30 years, ”the“ hot line” explained.

There is, however, one bonus in all this sad story. The Moscow government by its order allocates as much as 17 thousand rubles for the funeral of those who died from coronavirus infection. Just an "attraction of unprecedented generosity," given that the costs of the funeral themselves exceed 100-200 thousand. Where to find them in conditions of self-isolation, when many lost their jobs? And cemeteries, meanwhile, do not make discounts. For example, at the Vvedensky cemetery, official prices for a landfill site are from 480,668.76 rubles. Place for burial in a coffin at the Khovansky cemetery in Moscow - from 131,983.6 rubles. up to 356 355.72 rubles, as indicated on the official website. So the cemetery business literally “bloomed” during the pandemic.

True, as we were informed on the "hot line" on the organization of the funeral of coronavirus deceased, it is free to bury the deceased from Covid-19 at Butovsky, Alabushevsky and Zakharyevsky cemeteries.

And thanks for that.