Coronavirus: Bodies piled up and stored in vacant rooms at overwhelmed Detroit hospital

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Photographs taken by a worker at Detroit’s Sinai-Grace hospital have revealed an institution overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases struggling to find facilities to store and dispose of bodies.

In the images, which were released to CNN by an emergency room worker, full bodybags are seen piled up in rooms usually used for storage and medical studies. Others are seen piled up in refrigerated units in the hospital’s parking lot. CNN confirmed the validity of the images with two anonymous hospital workers.

The scenes resemble images from hospitals in New York, which is struggling to cope with the number of Covid-19 victims. There, refrigerated trucks have been repurposed as mortuaries, while “unclaimed” bodies are being buried on Hart Island.

Sinai-Grace recently saw emergency room nurses stage a sit-in as they demanded more nurses be brought in to help them manage the influx of new patients. However, the hospital’s intensive care caseload has reportedly dropped in recent days as the number of hospitalisations begins to fall.

Detroit is the largest city in Michigan, which has so far recorded around 1,600 deaths. While the rate of new infections there is said to be slowing down somewhat, governor Gretchen Whitmer has warned that lifting the state’s stay-at-home order could be disastrous.

Ms Whitmer, a Democrat, recently found herself in a spat with Donald Trump, who referred to her as “that woman in Michigan” and complained she was not appreciative enough of his administration’s assistance.

She has lately reiterated that her state’s hospitals are “dangerously low” on personal protective equipment needed to safeguard medical workers against infection, while the state’s top doctor acknowledged that hospitals are still “overwhelmed”.

Detroit recently lost a bus driver to coronavirus two weeks after he raised the alarm about riders with symptoms failing to take responsibility for others’ safety. Jason Hargrove posted a video on Facebook in mid-March warning that the virus is “for real” and recounting how a woman boarded his bus only to cough in close proximity to several other passengers. One in five of the city’s bus drivers is now in quarantine.