China’s funeral industry is in a state of paralysis due to covid deaths

In China, which is experiencing a massive outbreak of coronavirus, crematoriums are overcrowded. They cannot cope with the huge number of deaths, and the shadow business is booming.

To burn relatives who died from covid, people have to significantly overpay, tells January 4 Deutsche Welle. The sharp increase in infection in China has not stopped since the beginning of December. It began shortly after the decision was made to relax quarantine measures due to anti-lockdown protests. The Chinese authorities have stopped publishing daily data on COVID-19. According to unofficial information, millions of people in the country are infected every day.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg, citing informed sources and experts, noted:

“Funeral homes in major cities are full, some experts warn the worst is yet to come.”

One funeral home in Beijing reported that about 140-150 bodies are cremated every day, while previously their number did not exceed forty. The Longhua crematorium in Shenzhen said they burn about 500 bodies a day, five times the average. Crematorium workers in Beijing and Shanghai say the nearest free cremation spot can only be booked for mid-January. Some funeral service organizations have switched to an online queuing system.

The Bloomberg agency states that a shady business of cremation of bodies has developed in China. Previously, it cost several thousand yuan, but already in January, some crematoria began to demand tens of thousands of yuan. For example, cremation for three days will cost 68 thousand (9316 euros), and on the day of death – 88 thousand yuan (12 056 euros).

Analysts at the British company Airfinity note that at the end of December in China, up to 9,000 people died from coronavirus every day. They predict that the death rate will peak on January 23 and will be about 25 thousand people a day, and the total number of deaths from covid from December will reach 584 thousand.

EU offered the PRC donations of COVID-19 vaccines to help contain the massive outbreak. Against this background, a number of countries last week approved mandatory testing for visitors from China – Italy, the United States, Japan, India and Malaysia. Germany is still considering. The European Union is discussing the possibility of introducing uniform requirements for mandatory testing of visitors from China.

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