Southeastern NC hospital brings in mobile morgue to keep up with rising COVID-19 deaths
The death toll from COVID-19 in part of southeastern North Carolina has gotten so high that the hospital in Lumberton has had to bring in a mobile morgue.
UNC Health Southeastern decided it needed the mobile unit last week because its on-site morgue was full, according to Joann Anderson, the hospital’s president and CEO.
So far this month, 39 people with COVID-19 have died at Southeastern, Anderson said, well above the previous high of 31 deaths in January during the pandemic’s previous peak.
The mobile morgue is a refrigerated trailer with room for six gurneys. The hospital’s on-site morgue, where bodies are kept until a mortuary or funeral home can come get them, has room for 12.
“We’re at 11 today, but it has been full at 12,” Anderson said in an interview Monday. “Fortunately we’ve not had to put anyone in the mobile one yet. But we’re at 11, and unfortunately I just heard a Code Blue called a few minutes ago. That sends chills up my spine to think that that might be the 12th one.”
Robeson County has low vaccine rate
Images of mobile morgues outside hospitals in New York City in April 2020 underscored how quickly the coronavirus pandemic had overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes in the country’s largest metropolitan area. Now, as the more contagious delta variant of the virus brings a resurgence of COVID-19, hospitals in places such as Alabama, Oregon and Florida are using them as well.
Anderson said she was both heartbroken and infuriated by the need for the mobile morgue. Robeson County, where her hospital is located, has the lowest rate of vaccination against COVID-19 in the state; only 29% of the county’s population is fully vaccinated, compared to a statewide average of 50%, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
“That makes us a vulnerable population for the delta variant, and we’re seeing that,” Anderson said. “When I came in this morning, the cars were lined up for almost three blocks to get tested. I’d love to have three blocks of people waiting to get vaccinated.”
The mobile morgue came from the state Division of Emergency Management. Anderson said Southeastern has used one at least once before, in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew in 2016, when the hospital was without power and water for several days.
The coronavirus pandemic is taxing Southeastern in other ways. The hospital, which became part of the UNC Health system in December, had 59 COVID-19 patients on Monday, the highest number since the pandemic started. The intensive care unit and the COVID unit are both full, and patients of all kinds are backed up in the emergency department waiting for beds to become free.
Plea for vaccination
At the same time, turnover among staff exhausted by the pandemic has spiked this summer, as it has at hospitals around the country. Southeastern, which has operated with just under 300 beds in the past, has staff to fill only about 250 of them, Anderson said.
In a Facebook post on Saturday evening, Anderson begged people to take COVID-19 seriously and to listen to doctors and public health officials about vaccination. She noted that people who are vaccinated are much less likely to get ill or require hospitalization for COVID-19.
“The vaccination is not 100% effective in terms of keeping you from getting COVID,” she said Monday. “But it’s going to keep you, most likely, from being in that mobile morgue.”
