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New York City's Chief Medical Examiner office is denying reports of backlogs within the office.
In a conversation with Newsweek, a spokeswoman for the office denied a report from the New York Post that was published on Thursday. The Post claims that a backlog of deaths at the Chief Medical Examiner's office has resulted in hospitals having to deal with shifting dead patients around their facilities.
When contacted by Newsweek about the story, the Chief Medical Examiner's Executive Director of Public Affairs Julie Bolcer disputed the claim, saying, "The medical examiner's office does not have any backlogs, and we don't have delays."
An anonymous source, however, told the Post, "The whole hospital system is at capacity with patients and, of course, that includes the morgues. We have so far been able to manage deaths by moving them from one hospital to another and getting additional storage units."
Another tipster, a hospital official, told the paper that the Chief Medical Examiner's office might be running out of space due to its being "slammed" with bodies.
"Their coolers are stacking up," said the secondary source.
However, Bolcer denied that there has been an overflow of bodies. In fact, the medical examiner's office is creating more room to accommodate these deaths, which she said were due to a combination of a variety of factors.
"What has happened, of course, is whether it's because of the pandemic or a lot of other factors, hospitals are seeing increasing numbers of deaths and they have limited morgue capacity," she explained. "Those are separate from our morgues, and it's the hospital morgues that have asked OCME to step in and relieve some of that pressure that they have been experiencing this past week. So OCME in the past week stepped up and did relieve the hospitals of the pressure that they had in their morgue stations. We have increased our capacity at our…facilities and are accommodating those cases at OCME."
Another aspect of the Post report that Bolcer addressed was an alleged backup of crematory services. The paper claims that funeral directors are having to wait up to seven days for cremations, which are often regulated and operated by the state. Funeral directors who spoke to the Post slammed the medical examiner's office for the backup. However, the spokeswoman denied that the office even operates crematoriums.
"We don't do cremations," Bolcer said. "Crematoriums are not run by the medical examiner's office."
In a separate statement issued to Newsweek later on Friday, Bolcer reiterated the agency's commitment to assisting hospitals during this surge onward.
"The pandemic exerts pressure throughout the system, from the capacity of hospital morgues to the operations of funeral homes and the ability of families to arrange services in a timely fashion," said the emailed statement. "OCME is prepared and equipped to expand its capacity and accommodate these additional cases as needed in service of the system."
Newsweek reached out to a representative for NYC Health + Hospitals for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.
