Italian actor trapped with his sister's body amid coronavirus lockdown

PanARMENIAN.Net - Italian actor and mixed martial arts trainer Luca Franzese was trapped for more than 36 hours at home with his dead sister Teresa Franzese when she died after contracting the novel coronavirus.

For almost two days, he was unable to find a funeral home that would bury her, The Washington Post says.

“I have my sister in bed, dead, I don’t know what to do,” Franzese said in a Facebook video over the weekend, pleading for help. “I cannot give her the honor she deserves because the institutions have abandoned me. I contacted everyone, but nobody was able to give me an answer.”

In Italy, which has the second-highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the world, 827 deaths have been attributed to covid-19. The government has taken extraordinary measures to contain the pandemic, restricting the movements of nearly 16 million people as the entire country has gone on lockdown.

According to Al Jazeera, Teresa Franzese, 47, suffered from epilepsy but was healthy up until last week, when she began showing symptoms of the coronavirus. She died on Saturday evening, in her Naples home.

A number of funeral homes refused to come and take her body, telling him they weren't equipped to deal with the situation.

And it was only on Monday morning that a local funeral home finally agreed to take Teresa’s body, sending a crew outfitted in masks, goggles and hazmat suits to collect her corpse.