“Covid Triangle” appears in the poorer neighborhoods of London as a variation of Britain

LONDON – For more than a century, the John Harris Family Funeral Home has been burying people from London’s East End working class. He says he has never seen death on the scale of Covid-19.

He receives 20 calls a day and hires more staff to handle it. “My 92-year-old father was burying during Blitz in the 1940s, when German bombers leveled much of the area,” Mr Harris said. “He has not experienced this level of mortality.”

The outbreak here offers a sharp warning to the United States and others about what is expected if more contagious variants of the new coronavirus persist – such as the one that is spreading through this densely populated and ethnically mixed community.

In London̵

7;s East District of Barking and Dagenham earlier this month, every 16th resident is thought to be infected with Covid-19. A local hospital in nearby Romford donates oxygen as beds run out. It has recently passed a dark stage: more than 1,100 patients have died from the virus.

The local government has four cars circling the streets with megaphones calling out the words “Coronavirus kills.” Religious leaders agreed to stop conducting personal services in an attempt to stop the spread of the pathogen.