BEIJING-(MaraviPost)— Residents in China have started burning the bodies of their loved ones in the streets following the increase in the COVID-19 deaths which has resulted in funeral homes and hospitals overwhelming in the country.
This comes after Beijing axed its ‘zero-Covid’ policy last month after three years of stringent curb, causing cases to soar in the country.
According to an AP report, over the last couple of months China has been grappled with national COVID-19 waves and emergency wards in small cities and towns southwest have been Beijing are overwhelmed.
The country’s emergency rooms are reportedly turning away ambulances, relatives of sick people are searching for open beds, and patients are slumped on benches in hospital corridors and lying on floors for a lack of beds.
According to health experts, the country’s COVID cases are expected to reach their first peak on January 13 with 3.7 million daily infections, and warned deaths in the coming months could hit 2.1 million.
In December, covid-19 patients across the country were seen lying in beds outside hospitals in Shanghai and some families reportedly are still keeping the bodies of their loved ones in their homes weeks after their demise due to inaccessibility of crematoriums in the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic that first merged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 devastated nearly all parts of the world with some of the major world economies collapsing.
As of 4 January 2023, the pandemic had caused more than 661 million cases with about 6.69 million confirmed deaths, making it one of the deadliest in history.
The WHO report indicated that China has reported 10,322,499 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and about 31,914 deaths from 3 January 2020 to 4 January 2023.
However, the country has been heavily criticized for downplaying Covid deaths which the government responded that the reported death toll was accurate as the country had updated its method of counting fatalities caused by the virus.
The country’s latest guidelines from the National Health Commission stated that only those whose death is caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting the virus are classified as Covid deaths while the rest are classified as caused by other reasons.
