(Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon has delivered 37,000 body bags over the last week to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is seeking 100,000 to help address the coronavirus pandemic.
The Defense Logistics Agency provided what the military calls “human remain pouches” from a combination of its stockpile and expedited shipments from its current provider. In addition, the agency placed orders for 63,000 more of the bags to fulfill the remainder of FEMA’s request, Patrick Mackin, a DLA spokesman, said Thursday in an email.
They will be delivered from late this month through July, he added.
A FEMA spokesman said last week that the agency was making “prudent planning” for potential future needs and that includes preparing for “mortuary contingencies” from U.S. states.
The White House forecast last week that as many as 240,000 Americans might die in the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, even with another 30 days of the most stringent public health restrictions in place. But that grim appraisal is being tempered.
“I believe we are going to see a downturn” and projections look “more like the 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday on NBC.
Fauci said he thinks the U.S. is starting to see a flattening of the curve in New York. “I don’t want to jump the gun on that but I think that is the case,” he said.
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