Shanghai COVID horror: Families get only 5 to 10 minutes slots to mourn loved ones

The China COVID cases are surging and WHO has already pointed out that China has underrepresented the COVID data. The global health body has held a meeting concerning COVID in mainland China. If one goes by the books, Beijing eased down the COVID restrictions but the COVID story for China continues to remain gloomy. 

The story of China’s crematoriums in Shanghai is sure to break hearts. Shanghai deaths are so much so that one funeral home is handling five times more corpses than usual per day, according to a report by Bloomberg. The mourning loved ones are merely allocated five to 10 minutes to mourn the dead, the Tuesday report added. 

One of the funeral homes is Longhua Funeral Home. Dozens of bodies are laid out on stretchers. To avoid piling up the dead bodies in a crematorium, the funeral house is only allowing mourners to briefly pay their respects to their dear departed souls. Later they are simply ushered away, the outlet added. According to one Longhua employee, in a conversation with Bloomberg revealed that the system is broken and in shambles. “The whole system is paralyzed right now,” the Longhua employee said. 

The situation is no different at Baoxing Funeral Parlor in Shanghai. One can substantiate the reports to some extent as the Chinese health authorities as quoted by Beijing Daily that on 11 December emergency services were overwhelmed as they received over 30,000 calls in a single day. Speaking with Beijing Daily, Chen Zhi, chief physician at the Beijing Emergency Medical Center, said that currently, the resources for answering emergency calls and dispatching ambulances are very tight.

The official death tally for the entire pandemic — starting in 2019 — stood at 5,241 fatalities on December 24, 2022 when the count was last updated. On Christmas Day, the commission announced it would no longer provide daily updates to its coronavirus figures amid a deluge of new cases. Earlier, Chinese human right activist Jennifer Zeng shared inside stories from Chinese hospitals which indicated a huge surge of COVID cases in the country and a shortage of medical staff.