Crematoria in China struggle to handle incoming dead bodies as the country battles a surge in covid cases that authorities are already assessing untraceable.
Infections are skyrocketing in China, stressing hospitals and leaving pharmacy shelves empty, after the government’s decision to end nearly three years of confinements, quarantines and massive covid screenings.
From northeast to southwest, crematorium workers across the country told AFP They cannot cope with the increase in deaths.
In Chongqing, a city of 30 million whose authorities this week asked people with mild symptoms to go to work, an employee said his crematorium had run out of space to store corpses.
“The number of bodies has increased in recent days,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
“We are very busy, no more cold rooms for corpses“, he insisted, although without directly linking this peak to covid.
In the large city of Guangdong (in the south of the country), an employee of a crematorium in the Zengcheng district told AFP that he was cremate more than 30 corpses a day.
“We have bodies arriving from other districts. There is no other option,” he said.
Another incinerator in the city was also “extremely busy”. “It’s three or four times more than in previous years, we’re burning about 40 corpses a day when it was just a dozen before,” said one worker.
“All of Canton is like this,” added this person, who said it was “hard to tell” if this increase was related to covid.
delayed burials
In the northeastern city of Shenyang, a professional funeral home said the bodies took up to five days to be buried because the crematoria were “absolutely saturated”.
When asked if it was covid-related, he replied: “What do you think? I’ve never seen a year like this.”
In the capital, authorities reported just five deaths from covid-19 on Tuesday, up from two the day before.
But outside Beijing’s Dongjiao Crematorium, AFP reporters saw more than a dozen vehicles waiting to enter, most of them hearses.
The delays were evident, and a front-row driver said he had been waiting for several hours.
Doubts
It wasn’t immediately clear whether this traffic jam was caused by a spike in covid deaths. and incinerator personnel would not answer questions.
The end of mandatory testing in China makes it difficult to trace infections. Authorities acknowledged last week that it was “impossible” to know the extent of the outbreak at the moment.
In addition, the country’s health area chiefs said on Tuesday that only those who died directly of respiratory failure caused by the virus would be included in the statistics as victims of covid-19.
“At present, after being infected with the omicron variant, the leading cause of death is still the previous diseases,” Wang Guiqiang, of Peking University First Hospital, told a National Health Commission news conference.
“The elderly have other underlying conditions, only a very small number die directly from respiratory failure caused by covid,” he added.
“We do not avoid the dangers of covid. At the same time, we must scientifically address the dangers of covid,” he insisted.
The US State Department said on Monday that this increase accounted for a international concern.
“We now know that whenever the virus spreads, it’s out of control, it has the potential to mutate and threaten people everywhere,” said spokesman Ned Price.
“The toll of the virus is worrying for the rest of the world given the size of China’s GDP,” he added.
Source: AFP
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Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.