Mandaue buys mortuary freezer for COVID casualties

Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes and Department of Health in Central Visayas representatives inspect the city’s mortuary freezer which will be installed at the Mandaue City Hospital within the week. | Contributed photo/Mandaue City PIO

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The city government of Mandaue has procured a 40-body capacity mortuary freezer van to cater to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) fatalities awaiting cremation.

In an update, the city’s Public Information Office (PIO) said this was “to address the needs of the citizens for a place to store the bodies of their deceased loved ones while waiting for cremation.”

The use of the mortuary freezer will be free of charge, on top of the free cremation services that the city offers for its indigent residents who will succumb to the COVID-19 related complications.

“This is done by the Mandaue City government in order to lessen the anguish and stress of Mandaue residents in looking for places to store the bodies of their dearly departed when they should be mourning for their dead,” the City Public Information Office (PIO) posted on its page on Monday, July 6, 2020.

Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes and representatives from the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) inspected on Monday, July 6, the mortuary freezer van which will be installed at the Mandaue City District Hospital within the week.

Cortes said the free storage services of the mortuary freezer would spare the grieving families of the P8,000 to P10,000 storage fees per day collected by private facilities while the bodies await to be cremated.

“Maluoy ta sa atong mga kaigsuonang Mandauehanon nga intawon magbayad og P8,000 hangtud P10,000 matag adlaw. Mao ning nangita tag paagi nga ang dakbayan sa Mandaue, ni-purchase gyud ta og atong kaugalingon nga freezer van para malibre ang atong mga kaigsuonang Mandauehanon nga di na intawon magbayad og P8,000 ngadto P10,000 matag adlaw,” Cortes said.

(We pity our fellow Mandauehanons who would have to pay from P8,000 to P10,000 daily. So the city of Mandaue bought our own freezer van so that our fellow Mandauehanons would not have to pay those daily fees to store the body of their loved ones while waiting for cremation.)

Mandaue city has already logged a total of 1,036 cases of COVID-19 after reporting 46 new cases on Sunday, July 5.

Of the total number of cases, 700 remain active of which 48 are from the Mandaue City Jail while 652 are from the community.

The city has also logged 311 total recoveries and 25 deaths.

Aside from COVID-19 deaths, Cortes said the mortuary freezer might also cater to other deaths although the city would still have to discuss with the DOH on the guidelines for the use of the storage facility./dbs