By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A SIGNIFICANT increase in deaths is overwhelming and distressing funeral home workers, according to Funeral Directors Association President Kirsch Ferguson.

The obituary section of the dailies helps illustrate the point: the standard obituary section of The Tribune is a maximum 48 pages, but an unprecedented 12 additional pages are being published in the main section of the paper today.

“Based on what I’ve experienced over the past year and in particular the last few weeks, I’d say there has been up to 30 to 50 percent increase in deaths,” Mr Ferguson said.

 “The most obvious reason is based on this surge of COVID cases we’re having. Secondary to that is the domino effect of persons not being able to access proper healthcare or hospitalisation during this time. It’s all part and parcel of what’s happening health wise.

 “In addition, as it relates to notices in the papers, some bodies of persons who expired sometime ago are just now being buried. The situation at the morgue is part of that because bodies were not being released, so that helps to explain the influx of notices as well.”

 Health officials have confirmed 343 COVID-19 deaths in The Bahamas to date, five of which were reported in the August 23 dashboard which was released yesterday. Forty-seven additional deaths are under investigation.

 The Bahamas is not among the countries that provides data on “excess deaths,” an indicator the US Centres for Disease Control defines as “the difference between observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods.”

 The measure is determined using various methodologies. Experts believe it captures the real burden of mortality related to the health events like the COVID-19 pandemic. Depending on results, the indicator could prompt questions about whether people have died from COVID-19 but were not diagnosed with the disease, or it could suggest that deaths have occurred because of indirect reasons like not having access to healthcare services.

 On Tuesday, media in the United Kingdom reported that England and Wales recorded 10,372 deaths in the week ending August 13, up 14 percent over their five year average for that period.

 “It has been overwhelming,” Mr Ferguson said. “One of the main things is the emotional distress funeral directors are going through. Certain families, they have up to three, four people dying since last year. They’re burying siblings, fathers and daughters. Physically, the man hours for workers, I can’t even begin to explain. It has been a strain on us all around. That’s why we can empathise with the doctors and nurses.”

 Mr Ferguson said he began noticing the significant increase in deaths about three and a half weeks ago.

 “We saw the increase edging up and we’re now in full bloom,” he said. “The spillover effect is that some of these deaths are not so much COVID, but COVID related. This whole process is just mind-boggling.”

 Former Health Minister Dr Duane Sands on Tuesday linked the increase in deaths to the suffocation of healthcare resources.

 “…This has to do with bed availability, a reduction in services, the availability of nurses and the impact on certain physicians being out sick,” he said.

 “So, right now it is very difficult to get certain types of cases done and to admit certain patients unless they are critically ill and even then, you know we have critically ill patients who are trying to get in hospital particularly from the Family Islands and we can’t bring them in.”