Coffins have filled up two hospital morgues, and then a cemetery morgue, and are now being lined up inside a cemetery church.
All across Bergamo, Italy, people are being picked up in ambulances, rushed to the hospital and dying in sealed-off wards where even their closest relatives are not allowed.
Many funerals are taking place with only a priest and funeral-home employee present, while family members face restrictions on gathering, remain in quarantine or are too sick themselves. So many have died that there is a waiting list for burial and cremation.
The people who are dying, memorialized in page after page of the local newspaper, L’Eco di Bergamo, are ex-politicians, electricians, emergency phone operators, priests.
Their short obituaries don’t mention the cause of death but don’t need to — 90 percent, the newspaper’s editor estimated, died because of the coronavirus.
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