Corona deaths: bodies are piling up in a German region
By: Jan-Henrik Wiebe
Tags: Coronavirus, Covid 19, Germany, Sachsen, Saxonia

Corona Deaths: Bodies Are Piling up in a German Region

The German federal state Saxonia has more cases per 100,000 people than any other state in Germany. Photo: Screenshot/Robert Koch-Institut

The number of corona deaths is increasing dramatically in Germany. By mid-November, around nine percent more people across Germany died than the average in previous years. For the federal state of Saxony, in the east on the border with Poland and the Czech Republic, the numbers are even more depressing, the mortality rate was 46 percent higher.

The situation in the state has been worsening since the beginning of December. According to an article in the local medium Tag24 about the crematorium in Dresden, the coffins with corpses there are piled up in overcrowded refrigerated chambers, alternative garages without refrigeration, coffins that have to be stacked in the corridor and entrance area.

An anonymous employee told the online medium that “the four ovens in the crematorium ran at times around the clock.” Even an extra night shift had been introduced, otherwise the situation could no longer be mastered. In addition, two out of four ovens have now broken.

“At the beginning of this week, the deliveries by undertakers from Dresden and the surrounding districts increased to more than a hundred deceased every day,” says Dresden’s mayor Eva Jähnigen, who is responsible for local cemeteries and the funeral system. “That is about twice as many people who die every day as is normal.”

The old crematorium in Dresden Tolkewitz. Photo: Kolossos/Wikimedia/CC-BY-SA-2.5

Mayor Jähnigen confirms that two ovens in the crematorium were broken, but one of which has already been repaired, the other not until next year. She and her team are now looking for additional capacities in the surrounding districts.

There is a very similar situation in the city of Görlitz, which lies directly on the border with Poland. There, too, the local crematorium is at its limit and the coffins can no longer all be put into the cooling spaces and are now stacked in the cooling chamber, reports Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR). Other districts ask whether they still have free capacity.

The situation in Saxony is not only dramatic in cemeteries and crematoria, but also in hospitals. Last week, Mathias Mengel, the Medical Director of the Zittau Clinic, slipped the word “triage” over the lips in a video link in front of around 100 listeners. The press spokeswoman corrected the statement the next day. The doctors did not have to decide which patient to connect to the ventilator — and most importantly — which one not. But you can no longer look after all patients yourself and have to take some to other clinics. And you have to think about who can cope with the strenuous transport, so the spokeswoman according to the magazine Der Spiegel.

The situation is so serious that the employees of the registry office in Zittau now even have to work at Christmas — to issue death certificates. The city crematorium asked them to do so, writes Der Spiegel. The dead cannot be cremated without a death certificate. And the dead cannot be stored until after Christmas.

The head of the office, Petra Wießner, is 63 years old and has already done her apprenticeship at the registry office in Zittau. “But what we’re going through right now — I haven’t seen such a disaster of deaths in 44 years,” she says.

More than 2,100 people died in Saxonia. The state has about 4 million inhabitants and more than 102,000 COVID-19 cases. No other German state has so many deaths per 100,000 people.

There is currently a lot of discussion in Germany about why the virus is spreading so rapidly in Saxony. According to sociologist Dr. Matthias Quent there is a significant connection with election results for the right-wing extremist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Whether there is not only a correlation but also a causality remains to be investigated.