LONDON – For more than a century, John Harris’ family-run funeral home has been burying people in London’s East End working class. He says he has never seen death on the scale that Covid-19 wrought.
He gets 20 calls a day and has hired more staff to handle it. “My father, who is 92, committed funerals during the Blitz in the 1940s.” “He did not experience this level of mortality.”
The outbreak here offers a serious warning to the US and others about what lies ahead as more contagious variants of the new coronavirus – like the one sweeping through this densely populated and ethnically mixed community.
In the East End district of Barking and Dagenham earlier this month, one in 16 residents is estimated to be infected with Covid-19. The local hospital in nearby Romford rationed oxygen because the beds were small. It has recently reached a bad milestone: more than 1,100 patients have died from the virus.
The local government has four cars sailing through the streets with megaphones that have the words “Coronavirus kill.” Religious leaders have agreed to stop holding personal services in an effort to stem the spread of the pathogen.