‘We ran out of space.’ Amid Covid-19 surge, an Illinois funeral home director says it’s been hard keeping up with demand
In November, the home’s numbers nearly doubled.
With a refrigeration capacity of about 12 deceased, Honquest said the home, which is northeast of Chicago, had to turn a preparation room into a second refrigeration area to keep up.
“We ran out of space,” he told the news station. “We literally ran out of space.”
On November 18, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death in the state, behind heart disease and cancer. Between March and October, the governor had said, the virus took more lives than “the next two highest causes, strokes and accidents, combined.” And the fall surge was quickly proving significantly