Graphic images are popping up showing families in China burning the bodies of their family members in the streets – a horrific consequence of the current rise in COVID cases in the country.
China’s funeral homes and hospitals say they’ve been overwhelmed after the country’s “zero-COVID” policy was reversed last month.
Videos shared on Twitter show alleged makeshift cremations going down in the streets.
One clip shows a burning picket coffin in a seemingly rural part of the country.
One other video, believed to have been shot in Shanghai, shows a gaggle of people gathered around a makeshift pyre that has been set on fire.
One funeral house is so overwhelmed that it will possibly only allow families five to 10 minutes to mourn a loved one, reported Bloomberg. So many persons are dying in Shanghai that Longhua Funeral Home handles five times more corpses than usual daily.
“The entire system is now paralyzed,” a Longhua worker told Bloomberg.
Between the overwhelming demand for cremations and funeral homes reportedly increasing the cost of their services on account of high demand, many individuals have resorted to cremating their family members.
“I attempted some ways to cremate my father, but none worked,” a Shanghai resident said in a neighborhood group chat on December 28. in response to screenshots shared online and reported in Bloomberg.
The post continued: “The Funeral Service Hotline has informed me that each one cremation sites are full until the latest yr. Since national law doesn’t permit the home of patients who’ve died of infectious diseases, I’ll discover a vacant cremation site in our area for my father’s cremation. If you may have an issue with that, call the police.”
In accordance with Bloomberg, local officials eventually intervened after protests from neighbors.
Videos shared online also show long lines outside Chinese funeral homes as desperate families wait to book a visit to the crematorium.
Relatives waited outside the Yinheyuan Funeral Home in Guangzhou last Thursday he told Radio Free Asia that they’d to depart the body of a deceased member of the family at home to face in line – because the funeral home couldn’t be reached by phone.
One other video from the Babaoshan Funeral Home in Beijing shows rows of cars with “Jing Funeral” written on them waiting outside the entrance.
The funeral home was forced to perform cremations 24/7 to maintain up with the increase in demand, Radio Free Asia reported.
The full number of COVID deaths since December stays somewhat of a mystery as officials have only confirmed a handful of deaths since President Xi Jinping’s administration abruptly modified its COVID-19 zero count policy.
London based research data company Airfinity estimates the situation in China over 2 million COVID cases daily and around 14,700 deaths a day.
The official nationwide death toll for the entire pandemic was 5,241 as of December 24, 2022, when the number was last updated.