France converts part of world's largest wholesale food market into temporary morgue amid coronavirus pandemic
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The French government announced it is converting part of the world's largest wholesale food market into a temporary morgue space as the coronavirus death toll surged to 5,387 in the country on Thursday.
The halls of the Rungis Market will be turned into a makeshift morgue to store the bodies of the coronavirus fatalities, as morgues in the city have reached their maximum capacity.
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The location of the new morgue space -- outside of Paris, which has been hit the hardest in the country -- "will allow bodies to be kept in the most dignified and acceptable conditions from a public health point of view," the French police said in a press release.
Rungis was used as a morgue space in 2003 when hundreds of elderly people were stored in freezer trucks and cold vegetable stores after dying from the French heatwave.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The market space will once again be open for storing bodies beginning Friday, City Police Chief Didier Lallemen said in a statement, according to reports by Newsweek.
When construction is completed, there will be two visitation rooms for family members to pay their respects, but country-wide social distancing rules will only allow 20 people at a time to be in the rooms.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}France is currently battling COVID-19 with 59,105 confirmed cases -- up from the day before by more than 3,000, when the count was 56,989.