More than 13,000 people have died in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a rapidity no one could’ve imagined. The city’s health care system and funeral homes have been overwhelmed and, as Scott Pelley reports, the military has been called in to help.
A New York Air National Guard Fatality Search and Recovery team has been aiding the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner for over three weeks, its members collecting bodies from facilities and residences. First Lieutenant Shawn Lavin heads the unit that 60 Minutes cameras followed. He says there are others, too, and more military to come. “We started with 13 members three weeks ago. I think there’ll be close to 400 people doing what we’re doing by the end of this week,” says Lavin. “Our initial information from my commanding officer was, we would be collecting just from hospitals. But after arriving here, we moved from, quickly, from hospitals into residences and long-term care facilities.”
Officials say the numbers are unprecedented. “We’re having to deal with things on a scale that we have never before anticipated,” says Dr. Barbara Sampson, New York City’s chief medical examiner.
Sampson says her agency has anticipated pandemics, but not this large. Lavin has also practiced for such scenarios. His unit had even planned on being in New York City in the spring for a training exercise. Instead, he and his men got the real thing, and on a grander scale than they had imagined.
“We’ve been training for a decade since 2009 about how we collect fatalities in this kind of incidence,” says Lavin. “But there’s really no way to prepare for what we’re currently going through. You can have all the actors you want, or all the dummies laid out… But when you’re actually doing it real world with grieving families and people taking your picture doing it… it’s a much different atmosphere.”
See the story on the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 19, at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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