THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) – Even after death, victims of COVID-19 face harrowing isolation in Thessaloniki, the city in Greece most severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Efcharis Gunseer, 84, was unable to see his daughter during any period of a losing battle with the virus, either in the nursing home where she first fell ill or in the hospital where she spent several weeks. The staff at the crowded intensive care ward was also too busy to make calls, said the daughter.
When Gunseer died in late August, his body was wrapped in two plastic bags and placed in a plastic-wrapped casket. According to rules set by city officials, she was not buried next to her late husband, but in a section of a cemetery reserved for people infected with the virus. His grave remains out of the reach of visitors.
“I think that dying alone like this is the worst thing that can happen,” daughter Mikaela Triandafyllidou, 45, told the Associated Press. “I only saw my mom for a moment, at a distance in the morgue for identification … People are dying with no one around, like dogs.”
More than 300 people have so far been buried in segregated plots, according to Thessaloniki officials.
Greece suffered an alarming setback in late October, when the country’s eight-month series of low infections ended abruptly and hospital wards were exhausted. Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, and neighboring areas in the north of the country have been impacted by the increase. For weeks, the city reported more daily new cases than Athens, despite having a population about a quarter the size.
The emergency in the city’s hospitals has been compared to the two cemeteries in Thessaloniki, where pandemic victims are buried and there are freshly dug graves to help keep funerals short. Fragile white crosses and small signs of plywood mark the tombs.
In Greece, where most cemeteries are overcrowded, 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 the authorities fear that the corpse bags and the coffin lids could slow the decomposition of the bodies of the pandemic victims.
“It is strictly forbidden to bury them anywhere else,” said Avarlis. He noted that people who died of sexually transmitted diseases used to be buried in reserved areas of cemeteries, a practice abandoned for decades.
The scientific opinion on the posthumous danger posed by COVID-19 is divided. Coroners use full protective equipment when performing autopsies on infected people, citing studies that indicate that the virus remains posthumously in the respiratory system, respiratory secretions, feces and blood.
However, Symeon Metallidis, an assistant professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Thessaloniki, thinks that precautions at the cemetery are unnecessary.
“I find it absurd to do that. It doesn’t make sense, ”said Metallidis. “There is no evidence of transmission of the virus after death, nor a reason to be buried for 10 years.”
At the Evosmos cemetery in Thessaloniki, an Orthodox Christian priest stands under a small black marquee waiting to perform funeral services, while gravediggers and porters in white overalls take care of the burials.
Chrysanthi Botsari, 69, recently lost her 75-year-old husband to the virus. She said she was never officially informed where his funeral would be at the end of November and had to seek the information out on her own.
“We didn’t know where they were taking him. They just told us that it shouldn’t be in the cemeteries where other people are buried because of the coronavirus, ”said Botsari.
“For me, this is unacceptable, inhuman,” said the widow. “All of these people died alone and defenseless.”
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