Air quality regulators have raised limits on the number of cremations that can be performed in Los Angeles County, citing a mortality rate that exceeds twice the pre-pandemic norm and a delayed ingestion of corpses.
More than 2,700 bodies were being stored at local hospitals and the county forensic office as of Friday, Jan. 15, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said Sunday, explaining its decision to enact an executive order suspending the boundaries of cremations.
This is the first time the South Coast AQMD has lifted cremation limits, said Nahal Mogharabi, the agency’s communications director.
All 28 Los Angeles County crematoria have the capacity to perform more cremations, but most of their permits include a monthly cremation limit due to environmental regulations, the regulator said. Environmentalists have for years claimed limits for cremations, which studies have shown emit toxic emissions of mercury from dental fillings. Mogharabi said the “toxic impacts of the air” resulting from the executive order were expected to be “relatively small”.
The order came at the request of the Los Angeles County Forensic Office and the Department of Public Health, which confirmed that the delay was in itself a potential threat to public health, the AQMD said. of the South Coast. He also warned that the coroner predicted that “another wave” of deaths would begin four to six weeks after the New Year’s holidays.
A man who answered the Cremation Society phone in Los Angeles said no one was available to talk because they were too busy. “We have exceeded capacity,” he said, refusing to give his name.
The backlog of bodies is just the last creepy detail that illustrates the severity of the coronavirus crisis in Los Angeles. As of Sunday, the county had suffered a total of 13,848 deaths due to Covid-19, more than half of them in less than two months since Thanksgiving.
On Monday, California became the first state to report more than 3 million cases of the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Hospitals in the region are struggling to care for the sick among the more than 13,000 new cases diagnosed every day. Health officials have told ambulances not to transport patients with little chance of survival; some hospitals have difficulty maintaining oxygen supply.
Pressure on the “death management system” is just one aspect of the crisis. The California National Guard has been called in to help hospitals and morgues by storing corpses in refrigerated trucks, the LA Times reported.
Meanwhile, hopes of getting relief from the various coronavirus vaccines remain far away. To date, California has administered the first doses of vaccination to only 2.2% of its population, one of the lowest rates in the country. Only Idaho, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama are left behind, according to an analysis of CDC data by the New York Times.