Authorities in Veles are trying to determine how was it possible that two citizens died in January and were only found in April. The 79 year old woman identified by the police as K.M., and her disabled son V.M. (53) were found in their apartment. An autopsy showed that the woman contracted the coronavirus and died at least a week ago and possibly much longer than that. It’s still not clear what was the cause of death of her son.

Neighbors said that they hadn’t seen the two for a long time, and the postman who would deliver the pension tried to enter a few times but nobody would answer. Welfare services said that they last saw the son in early January, when he came to renew his disability payments.

We are supposed to check on our recipients but as the coronavirus epidemic started we decided to stop doing the rounds, representatives of the Veles welfare center said. They insist that the mother was offered a place in a home and the son a place in an asylum but they refused because they had sufficient funds to live on their own.

On top of the horrific failure of the entire community to check up on the family, the city is now processing rumors that the virus was active there for months. Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce said that this case, in which the actual time of death of the woman is still not certain, prompts the Ministry to believe that the virus was affecting the elderly in the country long before an epidemic was declared.