The novel coronavirus pandemic has sparked a mortuary hiring spree in New York City.
The city has seen 44 job listings for mortuary technicians and medicolegal investigators posted by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in under a month.
The jobs are not for the faint-hearted and involve investigating the deceased’s cause of death.
Mortuary technicians usually assist pathologists in carrying out a post-mortem and tasks include taking tissue samples and weighing organs.
A body is moved from a refrigeration truck serving as a temporary morgue to a vehicle at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, in the Borough of Brooklyn on April 8. The city has seen 44 job listings for mortuary technicians and medicolegal investigators posted by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in under a month
A spokesperson for the medical examiner said: ‘Available positions for medicolegal investigators and mortuary staff were recently posted by our agency, and we’re assessing applicants at this time.’
It comes amid an unprecedentedly busy time for mortuary workers, as the state of New York observed a record-breaking increase in coronavirus deaths for a third consecutive day on Thursday, even as a surge of patients in overwhelmed hospitals slowed.
The death toll in New York state sits at 7,067 deaths following a rise in 799 fatalities.
Over two-thirds of the state’s deaths are in New York City alone, where fears are growing that the real death toll has been significantly miscounted and that a dramatic spike in New Yorkers dying in their homes is also linked to coronavirus.
Governor Andrew Cuomo described the death count – which increased by 799 in 24 hours – as a lagging indicator reflecting the loss of people sickened earlier in the outbreak.
Sally Aiken, a Spokane, Washington, medical examiner and president of the National Association of Medical Examiners said she had no doubt the demand for workers for ‘body transport’ was very high.
Medical personnel moves a fence in front of refrigerated trucks serving as make shift morgues at Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York City on April 9
She told Politico: ‘[I’m] sure the need for personnel is acute: workers to help with body transport, those to coordinate keeping track of bodies in the refrigerated trucks, workers needed for finding and notifying next of kin.’
The death toll for the entire country has continued to skyrocket. The US hit a death toll of 16,715 Thursday evening, a jump of nearly 2,000 fatalities of the deadly virus over the past 24 hours.
The country saw an increase in 33,381 infections mounting to 469,450 reported cases as of Thursday.
Source: dailymail US
