In the week since the 7.0-magnitude earthquake shattered this capital and jolted observers around the world, authorities have buried 70,000 bodies, about a third of the estimated final toll, officials said Tuesday.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN that at least 72,000 bodies had been recovered, a figure that did not include the unknown number of bodies buried by families or collected by the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

It was unclear how many of the dead had been identified prior to burial and how many of those burials occurred in mass graves. “We know that bodies have been buried, we feel inappropriately,” said Dr. Jon Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization. He cited lack of refrigeration as a complicating factor.

“Despite all our efforts, situations, circumstances are such that we are disappointed in many cases on how this has been managed, beyond everybody’s control,” he said.

PAHO, which is coordinating the health-sector response, offered a preliminary estimate of 200,000 dead.

Despite the growing death toll, aid workers focused Tuesday on the living. The United Nations estimated that 3 million people were in need of food, water, shelter and medical assistance.

Some needed more than that — they needed rescue. In all, 43 international rescue teams composed of 1,700 people have carried out some 90 rescues, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters.

On Tuesday night, a team of New York City Fire Department and Police Department rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble of a two-story building in the capital. The 8-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl were taken to an Israeli tent hospital.

The world’s generosity continued to overwhelm the ability of the airport in Port-au-Prince to process it. The result: some badly needed aid was left sitting on the tarmac.

U.S. Army Maj. Daniel Allyn, the deputy commander of the Joint Task Force Unified Response, said flights would be diverted to two alternate ports of entry within the next day or two to relieve the pressure. On an average day before the earthquake, the airport was handling 13 commercial aircraft; in the days since, it was handling more than 200, he said.

Some flights were diverting to Santo Domingo, causing congestion issues there, too, Andrus said.

Nevertheless, advances were being made. Many roads that were impassable in the initial aftermath of the quake had been cleared so that supplies could be trucked to those in need, he said.

And some hospitals appeared in better shape — surgeries resumed Tuesday at University Hospital, the country’s largest, Andrus said.

In Washington, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah told reporters Tuesday night that the U.S. response has been “swift, aggressive and coordinated.”

He cited the U.S. donations of 18 water production units providing nearly 2 million liters of drinking water per day and nearly 17 million meals as examples.

The goal of the efforts, he said, “is to make sure that the things we do collectively as an international community to support the relief effort are as sustainable as possible.”

At the capital’s general hospital, doctors were working under stressful conditions in buildings located away from the main building, which has been deemed unsafe.

“We have run out of IVs and IV needles and IV fluids,” said Dr. Mark Hyman of Partners in Health. “We’ve run out of surgical supplies. We have to wash with vodka and we have to operate with hacksaws because we don’t have enough operating tools.”

The military is going to help with organization and with supplies, Hyman said. “They’re going to help us get electricity, they’re going to help us get food, they’re going to help us get tents, they’re going to help us get all the operating supplies in,” he said.

(Source: CNN)