3, February 2021
Portugal: Funeral workers nearing ‘breaking point’ over Covid deaths 0
Yet another phone call comes in for Artur Palma, who is straining to cope with all the bodies piling up at his suburban Lisbon funeral parlour.
The call is from a nearby retirement home, prompting Palma to send his employee Jose Santos to collect the latest Covid-19 victim and drive her body back to the Velhinho funeral parlour he runs in Amadora.
Santos suits up in line with Portugal’s latest health guidelines: head-to-toe white suit, gloves and surgical mask. Then, he sets off in his hearse.
Faced with an explosion in Covid deaths during a virulent third wave in the last few weeks, Palma says that the demands on the business and staff are taking their toll.
“It’s real chaos. There are so many dead people we don’t have enough room for them all,” Palma says.
“It’s an enormous weight at all levels, physically and psychologically. We sleep little and we are reaching our limit. We are reaching the breaking point,” he adds.
Velhinho employees now make three or four trips a week to retirement homes to collect the dead, Santos, 62, tells AFP, at the wheel of his hearse.
That is about three times the number of deaths the funeral parlour handled in January 2020.
According to data compiled by AFP, over the last two weeks Portugal has recorded the largest number of infections and deaths relative to its population of any country in the world.
Over the year since the pandemic began, Portugal ranks seventh in the world for infections per capita but is lower down the list for deaths per capita.
The disease has claimed just over 13,000 lives in the country of 10 million people, including more than 5,500 in January alone.
A second general lockdown was introduced on January 15 in a bid to slow infections.
– ‘We feel it at home’ –
At the retirement home, Santos and a colleague place the body in a mortuary bag and wheel it on a stretcher to the hearse.
“It really has to happen like this from now on,” Santos says, stressing the importance of respecting health measures at each stage of preparing the body for burial.
Back at the funeral parlour, amid stacks of new ornate wooden coffins, Santos and Palma complete their protective gear by pulling on medical shoe covers, goggles, overalls and gas masks.
“We absolutely must stick to using this protective equipment. I myself put on three pairs of gloves. They are made for high-risk situations,” Palma says.
Covid-19 victims are wrapped in a shroud before being placed in the coffin.
Their bodies are not embalmed because of the contagion risk but disinfectant is sprayed everywhere.
When the coffin is sealed, Velhinho staff cover the joints with an adhesive tape, which, in turn, is sealed with several layers of cellophane.
The deceased is then put back in a refrigerated room, full of Covid victims.
Palma himself has lost family members to the disease.
“With Covid-19, I have already lost my aunt, my cousin, my father and my grandfather,” he says.
At the Velhinho funeral parlour, there are a total of just four people to cope with the recent surge in bodies and the work is having a high personal cost.
“It’s very difficult and we feel it at home with our families. Fortunately, they are there to support us,” Santos says, smoking a cigarette.
Source: AFP
21, February 2021
Violence erupts in Barcelona as protests over arrest of rap singer continue across Spain 0
Protests against the imprisonment of a Spanish rap artist have turned violent in Barcelona as thousands of demonstrators called for his release for the fifth consecutive night across Spain.
Angry protests initially began on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasél, and took him to prison to start serving a nine-month sentence for “glorifying terrorism” and insulting royalty in his music and on Twitter.
Since then, protesters have turned out every night, clashing with police in Hasél’s home region of Catalonia. Angry protests later began to spread to Madrid and beyond.
Police were deployed en masse, with dozens of police vans lining the streets of Madrid and Barcelona.
About 6,000 demonstrators began gathering in Barcelona early Saturday evening, and clashes broke out as they started marching towards police headquarters, according to local police.
Protesters hurled projectiles, cans and firecrackers at police, who fired foam bullets to disperse the crowd, the Catalan regional police said on Twitter.
Angry protesters attacked shops on Barcelona’s most prestigious shopping street, Passeig de Gracia, smashing windows and looting stores, according to police.
Officers arrested nine people across Catalonia, six of them in Barcelona.
Nine people were also injured, two of whom were taken to hospital.
More than 60 people have so far been arrested across Catalonia since Hasél was detained, police said.
One woman lost an eye during clashes in Barcelona, triggering calls from politicians to investigate police tactics.
Demonstrations in Madrid, however, were largely peaceful but in the northern cities of Pamplona and Lleida, police clashed with protesters.
Around 400 people gathered under a heavy police presence in Madrid clapping and chanting, “Free Pablo Hasél!”
Hasél was given the prison sentence in 2018 for “glorification of terrorism” through more than 60 tweets he published on Twitter between 2014 and 2016.
He was also fined $30,000 for insults, libel and slander for tweets about the former king Juan Carlos I and for accusing police of torturing and killing demonstrators and refugees.
Source: Presstv