THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) – Even after death, COVID-19 victims endure distressing isolation in Thessaloniki, the city of Greece most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Efcharis Gunseer, 84, was unable to see his daughter during any part of a lost battle with the virus, either at the nursing home where he first fell ill or at the hospital where he spent several weeks. . Overcrowded intensive care unit staff were also too busy to make phone calls, the daughter said.
When Gunseer died in late August, his body was wrapped in two plastic bags and placed in a wrapped coffin. According to the rules established by the city authorities, she was not buried next to her late husband, but in a section of a cemetery reserved for people infected with the virus. His tomb remains outside the confines of visitors.
“I think dying alone this way is the worst thing that can happen,” daughter Mikaela Triandafyllidou, 45, told The Associated Press. “I only saw my mother for a moment, from a distance at the funeral home to identify her … People are dying without anyone for them, like dogs.”
More than 300 people have so far been buried in the segregated plots, according to Thessaloniki officials.
Greece suffered an alarming setback in late October, when the eight-month period of low-grade infections in the country abruptly ended and hospital wards were set up. Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, and neighboring areas in the north of the country suffered the weight of the increase. For weeks, the city reported a higher daily number of new cases than Athens, despite having a population about a quarter the size.
The emergency at the city’s hospitals coincided with the two cemeteries in Thessaloniki, where pandemic victims are buried and rows of newly excavated graves to help shorten the funeral. Fragile white crosses and small plywood signs mark the tombs.
In Greece, where most cemeteries are overcrowded, the remains are usually removed after three years of burial and taken to an ossuary, but coronavirus victims will remain buried for ten years.
Giorgos Avarlis, the deputy mayor of Thessaloniki, said authorities are concerned that body bags and coffin covers could slow down the speed with which the bodies of pandemic victims decompose.
“It’s totally forbidden to bury them anywhere else,” Avarlis said. He noted that people who died of sexually transmitted diseases used to be buried in reserved sections of cemeteries, a practice abandoned decades ago.
The scientific opinion on the posthumous danger posed by COVID-19 is divided. Foresters wear full protective equipment when performing autopsies on infected people, citing studies that indicate the virus remains posthumous in the respiratory tract, respiratory secretions, feces and blood.
Still, Symeon Metallidis, an assistant professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Thessaloniki, believes cemetery precautions are mostly unnecessary.
“It simply came to our notice then. It makes no sense, “Metallidis said.” There is no evidence of transmission of the virus after death, nor is there any reason for them to be buried for ten years. ”
In the Evosmos cemetery in Thessalonica, an Orthodox Christian priest is under a small black tent waiting to perform funeral services, while gravediggers and clowns wearing white robes are in charge of burials.
Chrysanthi Botsari, 69, recently lost her 75-year-old husband to the virus. She said she was never officially informed where her burial would take place in late November and had to search for the information herself.
“It simply came to our notice then. We have just been told that it should not be in cemeteries where other people are buried because of the coronavirus, ”Botsari said.
“For me, this is unacceptable, inhuman,” the widow said. “All these people died alone and helpless.”
___
Follow Kantouris at https://twitter.com/CostasKantouris
___
Follow AP pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic,https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak