Sedgwick County buying new body cooler for COVID-19 victims
Sedgwick County is investing $80,000 in a new body cooler for potential victims of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Forensic Science Center has asked to purchase a walk-in cooler and racks, with installation costs,” said county Chief Financial Officer Lindsay Poe-Rousseau. “Unfortunately we know that there are deaths associated with COVID-19 and should there be an increase, already our FSC is at capacity in terms of their cooler space.”
The new cooler and racks will provide space for up to 30 bodies, said Shelly Steadman, interim director of the Forensics Science Center.
At present, the center can store 29 bodies maximum in its main cooler. It also has a smaller cooler with a capacity of seven set aside for cases where the person died of an infectious disease that requires extra precautions.
The cost will be paid with part of the county’s $99 million allocation from the CARES Act, a federal law providing grants to help local governments deal with unexpected costs due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Steadman said most COVID-19 victims’ bodies go directly from the hospital to the funeral home. But she said the coroner’s office surveyed them on their storage capacity and “it’s not very much.”
“If those facilities would happen to reach capacity, this would also serve as a place where these bodies could be stored until their final disposition,” she said. “We performed 12 post-mortem examinations on Monday. We are at full capacity . . . If there is any increase, we’re going to have an issue with storing those bodies.”
Even now, there are instances when the “livery service” that transports bodies for the county “uses their facility to temporarily store a body until we can bring it to our facility,” Steadman said.
The authorization to buy the new cooler passed the commission unanimously on Wednesday.
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 4:11 PM.
