St. Louis County’s $2 million temporary morgue for COVID-19 victims is closing

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    ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. (KMOV) — St. Louis County opened a temporary morgue in Earth City in April designed to be a dignity transfer center to accommodate those who had passed away around the region from the coronavirus. The temporary morgue is now closing.

The facility was built inside a refrigerated warehouse and was meant to store bodies if their numbers were too high and overwhelming to local hospitals and funeral homes. The plan was to have it hold up to 1,300 bodies if needed. Since its opening, the morgue served 57 victims.

The space was donated but the cost to build it out was close to $2 million. The cost was shared between St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin counties. In Monday’s announcement, officials with the St. Louis County Health Department said the facility ran at a lower cost than originally projected.

County Councilmember Tim Fitch said he was surprised by the surge morgue’s construction, adding he found out about it through media reports and claiming there was no conversation with any of the councilmembers.

St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin counties saw 878 COVID-19-related deaths as of Monday morning. The 57 bodies served at the surge morgue make up 6.5% of total deaths in these counties.

Fitch pointed to the math, which comes out to 36,000 taxpayer dollars per body.

“I don’t believe that there was a need to spend this kind of money for this kind of purpose,” he said.

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