Name: South Bend area hospitals look to refrigerated trucks to store bodies as COVID deaths rise
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South Bend area hospitals look to refrigerated trucks to store bodies as COVID deaths rise

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Jeff ParrottSouth Bend TribuneAs soon as this weekend, Beacon Health System, like an increasing number of communities around the country, could take delivery of a refrigerated truck to store the bodies of the growing number of people dying from COVID-19, a Memorial Hospital doctor confirmed Friday.The system was still discussing how to share the truck between Memorial and its other two hospitals, Elkhart General and Community Hospital of Bremen, if needed, said Dr. Dale Patterson, Memorial’s vice president of medical affairs.Memorial’s morgue has room for four bodies, while Elkhart General can fit three. Funeral homes typically can pick them up quickly enough, and that’s still the case, but Beacon wants the truck ready in case deaths keep increasing as they have been recently.“Earlier this week within a 48-hour period we had 10 deaths from COVID,” Patterson said. “It’s obviously a very delicate situation and topic and we want to do everything we can to treat people with respect, and keep as many patients as we can alive, but we realize the number of deaths is going up. We want to see properly cared for bodies after death and we have limited morgue space at our hospitals.”St. Joseph County reported 17 COVID-19 deaths from Sunday through Thursday, up from seven deaths for that period a week ago, while Elkhart County saw 15 deaths, up from 12 for those six days the prior week, according to Indiana State Department of Health records.On Friday in St. Joseph County, the rolling 7-day average of new cases was 310 and there were 4,084 active cases, meaning those testing positive within the past 14 days, both record highs, according to the county health department.As a precaution, Saint Joseph Health System bought two refrigerated trucks in April, for its Mishawaka and Plymouth hospitals, but hasn’t yet had to use them, said CEO Chad Towner. The Mishawaka hospital’s morgue holds six bodies, while Plymouth has room for only two.“It wouldn’t take much to overload that,” Towner said, noting the Mishawaka hospital had four COVID-19 deaths one day earlier this week. “We had to look at body bags, and how many body bags do we have, what kind of body bags. When we have the refrigeration, how do we store them. There’s a lot of things we had to predict back in April that are many steps ahead of where we are that are just unimaginable.”The problem of how to handle a number of bodies that exceeds the hospital’s morgue space is likely more complicated than the average person might think, Towner said. The body might need to be transported out of state. The person’s family members might be quarantined and can’t leave their home to make arrangements. Funeral homes might run out of space.“The refrigerated truck, we anticipated, would give us a little bit of room to properly honor the deceased and work with the families rather than just the impossible situation of what do you do if there is no place to put these individuals who have died of COVID and other things, it’s not just COVID deaths.”A reporter asked Towner how many bodies could fit in the white refrigerated semi-trailer parked next to the Mishawaka hospital.“I asked that same question this morning and I don’t know,” Towner said. “It depends on how fast things come and we’ll have to adjust. It’s morbid to even be thinking about these things, it’s just awful, but unfortunately with the surge we’re seeing in this nine-county service area, they’re averaging about 1,000 new cases a day over the past couple of weeks.”Lakeland Hospital in Niles, considerably smaller than Memorial or Saint Joseph, hasn’t reached the point of needing extra morgue space because of the pandemic, said spokeswoman Jessica Springer.“We don’t have any plans in place for a refrigerated truck at this time,” Springer said. “Spectrum Health Lakeland works very closely with our area funeral homes to prevent this from happening.”

Jeff ParrottSouth Bend TribuneAs soon as this weekend, Beacon Health System, like an increasing number of communities around the country, could take delivery of a refrigerated truck to store the bodies of the growing number of people dying from COVID-19, a Memorial Hospital doctor confirmed Friday.The system was still discussing how to share the truck between Memorial and its other two hospitals, Elkhart General and Community Hospital of Bremen, if needed, said Dr. Dale Patterson, Memorial’s vice president of medical affairs.Memorial’s morgue has room for four bodies, while Elkhart General...

South Bend area hospitals look to refrigerated trucks to store bodies as COVID deaths rise

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