The Boston Globe contained shocking visuals of 16 pages of obituaries and death notices on Sunday's edition due to the devastating death toll of the coronavirus in Massachusetts and New England. Nobody knows how many death notices out of 16 pages came from coronavirus victims as death notices don't always mention how the person died. However, several notices mentioned battle with the virus.
CNN reported the section has been increasing every Sunday since the coronavirus outbreak started surging in Massachusetts. Previous Sunday paper carried 11 pages of death notices, said Jaclyn Reiss, the Globe's digital editor.
Reiss informed that as families are not allowed to conduct funeral now, there is no time constrain to publish the death notice before memorial service. The reason behind the increase in death notice over Sundays could be because families are preferring to publish it on weekends when the paper gets high readership.
Other newspapers marked an increase in death notice too
Newspapers that gets distributed in other hot spots of the country are also observing a drastic rise in numbers of obituaries and death notice. The Times-Picayune, The New Orleans Advocate in Louisiana published around ten pages of death notices on Sunday. According to an article in The Advocate, four pages of obituaries were published the same weekend last year.
The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey carried nine pages of obituaries on April 12. Newspaper published 17 obituaries carried on one and a half pages last year same weekend. Hartford Courant had published 12 pages of obituaries on Sunday. "It's more than I've ever seen. On a Sunday, you'd see at the most three, maybe four pages, so it was about triple what we normally do," said Rick Green, the Courant's assistant managing editor.
The United States reported 28,123 new cases and 1,939 deaths on Monday taking the total number of confirmed cases to 792,938 and 42,518 fatalities due to coronavirus so far. Numbers of deaths almost doubled in one week while several states are planning to reopen their economies. Governor of Georgia and South Carolina announced to ease restrictions this week.
Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said that each Governor can decide for themselves if they have reached specific guidelines put out by the President in specific areas.
