DETROIT—Grieving families plead with hospital staff to see the bodies of loved ones, to hold their hands, and say goodbye.

They cannot.

The bodies — still shedding the coronavirus — are so dangerous that they are double-bagged. The bags are wiped down with a bleach solution.

Even autopsies are suspended, said Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor of infectious diseases at Wayne State University who is also in charge of infection control for the Detroit Medical Center’s eight hospitals.

Across metro Detroit, the epicenter of the coronavirus in Michigan, the pandemic has entered a new and terrifying phase. On Monday, Detroit’s infection rate and death toll skyrocketed with 259 newly confirmed cases, pushing the city’s total past 1,800, with 52 deaths. Across the three metro counties of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb, there are more than 5,200 cases and 158 deaths.

Community leaders say it is becoming difficult to find a Detroiter who doesn't know someone who is infected with the virus. Detroit politicians and civic figures are listed among the sickened or dead. Even the city’s police chief is barking orders from the solitude of quarantine.

“It has become a fear that haunts us all,” said Linda Smith, executive director of the housing nonprofit U-SNAP-BAC on the city’s east side.

Monday was supposed to be opening day for the Detroit Tigers, an event that fills downtown Detroit with tens of thousands of fans and pumps millions into area businesses. Instead, the biggest crowd in the central business district consisted of dozens of FEMA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel preparing to transform the city’s largest convention hall into a 900-bed field hospital.