THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) – Even after their deaths, COVID-19 victims endure harrowing isolation in Thessaloniki, the city in Greece most acutely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Efcharis Gunseer, 84, was unable to see her daughter during a losing battle with the virus, in the nursing home where she first fell ill or in the hospital where she spent several weeks. The staff at the overwhelmed intensive care unit were also too busy to make phone calls, the daughter said.
When Gunseer died in late August, her body was wrapped in two plastic bags and placed in a shrink-wrapped crate. According to city government regulations, she was not buried next to her dead husband, but in a section of a cemetery reserved for people infected with the virus. Her grave remains off limits to visitors.
“I think dying alone that way is the worst that can happen,” daughter Mikaela Triandafyllidou, 45, told The Associated Press. “I only saw my mother from a distance in the morgue for identification … People die without anyone there for them, like dogs.”
More than 300 people have been buried in the segregated lots so far, according to Thessaloniki officials.
Greece suffered an alarming setback in late October, when the country’s eight-month streak of low-level infections came to an abrupt end and hospital wards were heavily burdened. Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, and neighboring areas in the north of the country were the hardest hit. For weeks, the city reported more new cases than Athens on a daily basis, despite a population of about a quarter of its size.
The emergency in the city’s hospitals was matched at Thessaloniki’s two cemeteries where pandemic victims are buried and rows of freshly dug graves stand to keep burials short. Thin white crosses and small plywood signs mark the graves.
In Greece, where most cemeteries are overcrowded, the remains are usually removed after three years of burial and taken to an ossuary, but victims of the coronavirus will remain buried for 10 years.
Giorgos Avarlis, the deputy mayor of Thessaloniki, said authorities are concerned that the body bags and coffin covers could slow down how quickly the bodies of pandemic victims fall apart.
“It is strictly forbidden to bury them anywhere else,” Avarlis said. He noted that people who died of sexually transmitted diseases used to be buried in reserved areas of cemeteries, a practice that was abandoned decades ago.
Scientific opinion about the posthumous danger of COVID-19 is divided. Coroners wear full protective gear when performing autopsies on infected people, citing studies indicating that the virus remains posthumously in the airways, respiratory secretions, feces, and blood.
Still, Symeon Metallidis, an assistant professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Thessaloniki, usually doesn’t feel the need for precautions in the cemetery.
“I think it’s absurd to do this. It makes no sense, ”said Metallidis. “There is no evidence of transmission of the virus after death, nor is there any reason to bury them for 10 years.”
At Evosmos Cemetery in Thessaloniki, an Orthodox Christian priest waits under a small black marquee to hold funeral services, while gravediggers and porters in white overalls handle the funerals.
Chrysanthi Botsari, 69, recently lost her 75-year-old husband to the virus. She said she was never officially told where his funeral would take place in late November and that she had to find out the information herself.
‘We didn’t know where they would take him. They just told us that it shouldn’t be in the cemeteries where other people are buried because of the coronavirus, ”said Botsari.
“To me that is unacceptable, inhumane,” said the widow. “All these people died alone and helpless.”
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