A Colombian advertising company has unveiled hospital beds that can be converted into coffins in response to shortages of both medical needs amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The firm, ABC Displays of Bogotá worked on advertisements but has been mostly paralyzed due to lockdown in Colombia.
The Bogota-based company created this cardboard bed with metal railings that designers say can double as a casket if a patient dies.
The Company’s manager Rodolfo Gómez expressed that he was inspired to find a way to help after observing the alarming increase in coronavirus deaths in Ecuador, a neighbouring to Columbia.
According to reports, families in the coastal city of Guayaquil, Ecuador live with dead loved ones in their homes for days due to scarcity and increased price of coffins.
Gomez said;
Poor families don’t have a way of paying for a coffin. The beds can hold a weight of 330 pounds and will cost about $85 (about N33,000) each.
The company’s manager revealed that he plans to donate 10 of his new beds to Colombia’s Amazonas department, where resources are in short supply.
Gomez said he worked with a private clinic on the design, which he hopes will be put to use in emergency clinics that might become short on beds.
Though there is no clear indication whether the beds will be put to use and if orders have been placed for them.
A doctor has however skepticism of how sturdy a cardboard bed might be, warning that corpses should first be placed in a sealed bag before being put in a cardboard coffin, to avoid potentially spreading the disease.
As at May 15th, Ecuador has recorded 30,502 confirmed cases and a death toll of 2,338, while Colombia has 13,610 cases and 3,358 deaths.
Both small in comparison to the United States, which leads the world in coronavirus infections with 1,457,649 cases and 86,912 dead.
See photos from the making of the cardboard beds/coffins below;
Similarly, New York City has opened a ‘disaster morgue’, which uses refrigerated trucks to store bodies as the city’s morgues struggle to cope during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The solution is being seen as longer-term, and is designed to ease the pressure on funeral directors who have become overwhelmed, with the number of deaths in New York City.
A spokesperson stated that not all the bodies kept in the trucks will be victims of the coronavirus.
With the deaths occurring in a relatively short space of time, funeral homes’ ability to get on top of the number of funerals and cremations needed has been severely strained, as has their capacity to store bodies beforehand.
According to CNN, funeral homes have been turning down cremations because they have been unable to store bodies, and have been placing them in refrigerated trailers.
The city has proven to be the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in America with 27,617 deaths and 348,192 cases as at May 15th, which is about one-fifth of the country’s total cases – 1,457,649.
