AN OFFICIAL from the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) said all unclaimed Covid-19 cadavers were already taken by their immediate families, as they were not able to claim it right away after also testing positive for the virus.
SPMC officer-in-charge Dr. Ricardo Audan said in a radio interview Tuesday morning, January 5, 2021, that all of the cadavers of six individuals who succumbed to the virus were already claimed by their families days after he made an appeal in another radio interview.
Audan said in an earlier radio interview on December 29, 2020 that they were alarmed by the rising number of unclaimed cadavers of Covid-19 patients at SPMC's morgue, as this can only accommodate a few number of cadavers.
He previously said some of the families were "uncooperative."
In the recent interview on 87.5 FM Davao City Disaster Radio, however, he said they already responded and claimed their dead loved ones.
"Nirespond dayon sila. Ang problema lang is dili nila dayon makuha primarily because ang immediate family nagka-Covid pud, tapos nagka-contact tracing sa ilang family (They responded immediately. Among the factors that caused the delay was one of the family members contracting Covid-19 and contact tracing was conducted among them)," he said.
Audan said the SPMC, which conducts the confirmatory result of the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, is experiencing delay in the giving of the result.
Meanwhile, he said the purchased "cadaver van" or "freezer van" for excess Covid-19 cadavers that cannot be stored at the hospital's morgue has already arrived. The cadaver van can accommodate 15 cadavers.
In a recent phone interview, Davao City Covid-19 focal person Dr. Ashley Lopez told SunStar that this is a long-time problem, which was already raised in a previous meeting with the City Covid-19 Task Force.
Lopez said based on the guidelines issued by the Department of Health (DOH), those who died of Covid-19 must be buried or cremated within 12 hours.
According to the DOH guideline, "the procedures for burial and cremation shall be done within 12 hours after death. However, burial of remains
should be in accordance with the person's religion and culturally-acceptable norms, to the most possible extent (e.g. in Islamic rites, cremation is forbidden or 'haram')."
Lopez said some cadavers have been left at the morgue for several weeks.
He said they will take it up again in the next meeting on what to do with the cadavers left unclaimed after the prescribed time period.