The rising death toll from COVID-19 has put a serious strain on two Oregon counties—so much that officials have sought refrigerated trucks to store the bodies of deceased patients.
Associated Press reports Tillamook County and Josephine County requested the trucks on Friday, as the United States experiences an alarming surge in Delta variant cases and COVID hospitalizations. The former county reportedly submitted the request to the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, and received a vehicle from nearby Klamath County on Friday. Tillamook officials said the county tallied six COVID deaths from Aug. 18-23—a relatively low number, but high for a county that tallied just six COVID deaths during the first 18 months of the pandemic. According to the AP, about 70 percent of Tillamook residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
“In the past week, we more than doubled the number of COVID deaths in Tillamook County, from five to eleven,” Commissioners Mary Faith Bell, David Yamamoto and Erin Skaar wrote. “Please get vaccinated.”
Josephine County, which has yet to receive its requested morgue truck, has a vaccination rate of about 53 percent. The AP points out that its commissioners have declined to promote the COVID vaccines and that the “vast majority” of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated.
In her request, Josephine County Emergency Manager Emily Ring said the local hospital was “exceeding daily cadaver storage capacity and the five funeral homes and three crematoriums describe themselves as not yet in crisis but at the edge of crisis capacity daily.” The county has asked for a truck that can hold “20-48 cadavers.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of U.S. patients hospitalized with coronavirus surpassed 100,000 this week—more than double what was tallied last month. It also marks the highest reported number since Jan. 14, when the nation hit its all-time high of about 142,000 COVID hospitalizations. Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, attributed the spike to the rapid spread of the Delta variant, which has wreaked havoc on states with the lowest vaccination rates.
“The numbers now … are actually in many ways worse than last August,” Offit told CNN. “Last August, we had a fully susceptible population, (and) we didn’t have a vaccine. Now, we have half the country vaccinated … but nonetheless the numbers are worse.”
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. hospitals in southern and northwester states are experiencing record numbers of coronavirus hospitalizations, resulting in a shortage of ICU beds and staff. Florida is reportedly averaging about 80 hospitalizations per 100,000 people. Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama have also been hit hard, as they’ve each reported over 55 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.
“We have enough people dying in such numbers in these locations that there is no room to put these bodies,” Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris told Rolling Stone. “We are really in a crisis situation. I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to do this.”
