Dead bodies piled up in Hungarian hospital

Illustration. Photo: MTI

Markusovszky University Teaching Hospital in Szombathely is in trouble; they do not have enough space for the growing number of human corpses.

24.hu reported, based on a reader’s letter and pictures, that the morgue of Markusovszky Hospital is in a miserable condition. The reader sent photos to show that the lack of space for the growing number of human corpses is becoming troublesome.

“There were this many dead bodies placed in the refrigerator this morning. Only 32 could be placed correctly, while another 20 dead bodies just lay on the ground on top of each other.” – explains the reader.

According to the complaint, what led to the current situation besides the pandemic is that the Markusovszky Hospital has been neglecting the morgue for decades. He added that there’s only one waiting room in the department where only about four people can fit – if there are more people, they have to wait outside of the building. A couple of days ago, there was also news about the shortage of heating and warm water in the Covid department of the Hospital.

To clarify the situation, 24.hu asked Markusovszky University Teaching Hospital. Even though they failed to give a plausible explanation, Zoltán Káldy, medical director of the hospital, admitted that there is a problem. Still, according to him, the situation is not undignified.

“We find it immensely disappointing that some people try to discredit our hospital in an undignified way, while our doctors and nurses work extremely hard to fight for the recovery of our patients. At Markusovszky University Teaching Hospital, we, under all circumstances, take care of all our patients who unfortunately passed away, in a respectable manner. At the moment, we need to include external sites, to make this possible.” – Káldy claimed.

In the middle of November, mayor of Szombathely, András Nemény talked about the pandemic situation in the hospital. At the time, there were 180 infected people, and on average, 5 to 9 people died daily due to the coronavirus in Markusovszky Hospital. On the other hand, they have 32 ventilators out of which they can only use 17 due to the shortage of employees. Specialist practices also had to stop so that 40 % of the beds could be transferred because of coronavirus patients.

However, the situation has just worsened as now Vas County has one of the highest infection rates. Two weeks before the mayor’s statements, the number of infected people was 1509, and it went up to 2526 just within 14 days.