Soldiers in Spain disinfecting retirement homes in the coronavirus-stricken country found the corpses of those who had died from COVID-19, evoking the macabre scenes of the “Spanish flu” pandemic that gripped the world a century ago.
“The army, during certain visits, found some old people completely abandoned, sometimes even dead in their beds,” said outraged Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said in a televised interview.
The Spanish flu in the United States left “dead bodies … stacked about the morgue like cord wood,” as a Boston doctor described it at the time. The new contagion hasn’t caused the carnage of the 1918 pandemic, but it has already killed thousands and will kill many more before it runs its course.
“The worst is yet to come,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday.
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Spain has already suffered one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world. Nearly 2,200 people have succumbed to the infectious disease already, including 462 deaths registered on Monday alone.
“This is going to be a difficult week when we can reach the peak of the epidemic, but this would not mean the problem is solved,” Spanish health minister Salvador Illa said.
Spanish officials are converting a public ice rink into a makeshift morgue, in part because the staff at Madrid’s public cemeteries don’t have the protective gear needed to bury the bodies of those who died of the coronavirus. Similarly, health officials have warned against moving corpses from retirement homes in suspected coronavirus cases.
Health officials are planning for “intensive monitoring” of retirement homes, with punishments expected for truant staff.
“We are going to be strict and inflexible when dealing with the way old people are treated in these residences,” Robles said.
