MORTUARIES WORRIED ABOUT RISE OF COVID-19 DEATHS

MBABANE – Some mortuaries are starting to worry about the high death rate in the country as a result of COVID-19.

While they are still able to deal with the situation, they worry about their handling capacity should the situation worsen. They said there were a lot of uncertainties on how the fatalities due to COVID-19 would stretch them. Currently, the mortuaries confirmed that they were receiving about 80 per cent of confirmed COVID-19 cases but there were challenges in that some of their clients were received as suspected cases only to be later confirmed positive.

Concern

As of yesterday, there were a total of 85 COVID-19-related deaths in Eswatini. The Ministry of Health has also noted with concern the increasing number of deaths due to COVID-19.
B3 Group Eswatini Director Dan Zikalala said they received one or two bodies of people who died of COVID-19 per week and were still able to manage the corpses. He said they  were still within their carrying capacity. However, he said they were concerned about the number of deaths in the country, which continued to increase.

Zikalala said there was uncertainty on how much the COVID-19-related deaths could stretch them and if they would be able to meet the demand. He added that the burden of handling COVID-19 bodies was costly for them as they catered for all the expenses. Zikalala said they had to meet additional requirements, including personal protective equipment (PPE) and body bags which were not there before the virus. He said most of the equipment was in limited supply as it was in demand worldwide.

Chief Operations Officer for United Holdings, an associate of Dups Holdings, Muzingaye Ndlovu said they were receiving a number of bodies  of people who died of COVID-19 and treating every case as a COVID-19 case. “Some of our clients are economical with the truth, more so when the deceased is fetched from home rather than a health facility,” Ndlovu said.
He said they had enough carrying capacity for accommodating the increasing COVID-19-related deaths happening lately. “We have the largest carrying capacity in Eswatini,” said Ndlovu. He said the TB Hospital in Manzini was also assisting in sharing the load since most of the bodies were kept there but once they were full, the spillover was then shared with them.

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