Palm Beach County braces for onslaught
Surging in deaths, morgue adds refrigerated containers as overflow
Palm Beach County has emerged as one of the hardest-hit places in Florida’s COVID-19 outbreak, recording 14 deaths in a single day over the weekend and leading the state’s death count on Monday.
At the county morgue, officials are fearing the epidemic will get worse. Two 40-foot refrigerated containers have been leased to store bodies if needed, said Paul Petrino, operations manager at the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“It has put a lot of stress on the system,” Petrino said. “We are consumed with COVID cases.”
With sprawling retirement communities, Palm Beach County is home to more than 350,000 people over the age of 65, the population most vulnerable to the new coronavirus. It has an older population than neighboring Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
Palm Beach County’s official death toll stood at 51 on Monday. That tally will continue to rise with a backlog of 29 cases with pending test results, Petrino said. One model
used by the White House shows the epidemic peaking in Florida on April 21, ultimately killing nearly 6,800 Floridians by August.
Broward County, which has a larger overall population than Palm Beach County, has recorded the second-highest number of deaths in Florida at 47, followed by Miami-Dade County’s 41. Statewide, 254 deaths had been recorded as of Monday, with just over half happening in South Florida.
Despite having the most virus deaths in the state on Monday, Palm Beach County had fewer confirmed cases of COVID-19 than Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Testing has been conducted much more extensively in those two counties, revealing a greater number of infected people.
Palm Beach County’s older population makes it particularly vulnerable to the virus, said Mary Jo Trepka, an epidemiologist at Florida International University. Older people are at higher risk of dying of the disease.
Palm Beach County’s median age is 45, compared with a median age of about 40 in Broward and MiamiDade counties. Italy, which is suffering a heavy toll, has a median age of 47.
Petrino said he’s hoping people will stay home, and those refrigerated containers at the Palm Beach County morgue stay empty. Even after death, bodies could still be infectious, and medical examiners are donning protective gear, he said.
“We treat every autopsy as if it is a positive COVID case,” Petrino said. “We just don’t know.”
Broward County also has secured refrigerated containers to supplement the morgue if necessary, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Craig Mallak wrote in an email.
Tragic stories are already emerging from Palm Beach County, which reported its first COVID-19 death on March 22.
Adrian and Stuart Baker, a Boynton Beach couple that had been married for more than 51 years, died six minutes apart on March 29 from COVID-19 complications, according to a CNN report.
Stuart Baker was 74, and Adrian Baker was 72, CNN reported.
“Just a few weeks ago, they were in perfect health,” their son Buddy Baker said in a video posted on social media. “We live in a world of ‘it can’t happen to me, it can’t happen to us,
“I don’t think the numbers are a true reflection of what is really going on. We are sitting in the dark.”
State Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Boca Raton
it can’t happen to my family.’ Well, it happened to us.”
State Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, said she wonders why more attention wasn’t given to her district earlier, which has more than 73,000 people over the age of 65. Slosberg represents West Boynton, West Boca and West Delray.
While Gov. Ron DeSantis touted golf-cart drivethru testing in The Villages retirement community on March 23, Palm Beach County’s first drive-thru testing site didn’t open until eight days later.
In a single day, Palm Beach County’s appointment line received 330,000 calls for drive-thru testing at FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches. Another location will open Tuesday at the South County Civic Center in Delray Beach.
Palm Beach County has more than 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Monday, but Slosberg suspects the number is much higher. The disease has affected people from the age of 1 to 104 in Palm Beach County, according to a state report.
“I don’t think the numbers are a true reflection of what is really going on,” she said. “We are sitting in the dark.”
In comparison, Miami Dade County had 4,600 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday. More than 24,000 tests had been conducted there, compared with about 6,000 in Palm Beach County.
At the Valencia Isles 55-and-up community in West Boynton, pickleball has ended, and other activities like theater group and chorus are on hold, said Henry Bartos, 83, a retired doctor.
He limits grocery shopping and wears a mask and gloves whenever he leaves his house to buy essential supplies or walk the dog.
“I assume everyone who I come in contact with has it, and I act accordingly,” he said.