Visuals from Epicentre of Virus Shows China’s Covid Horror

China is witnessing an unprecedented rise in Covid infections with reports of over 5,000 virus deaths everyday. The hospitals are grappling with a shortage of hospital beds, medicine and ICUs while the crematoriums are running at full capacity.

Amid the Covid scare in the country, reports have emerged of heaps of dead bodies lying around in funeral homes while the workers who are helping with the bodies have already contracted Covid.

Chinese human right activist Jennifer Zeng, who has been posting about the ongoing Covid horror on Twitter, shared a video from a funeral home where dead bodies are lying around. She further said that the workers handling the bodies have also contracted Covid.

However, the workers are carrying out the job. This comes after China allowed people with Covid-19 symptoms in Chongqing to work “as normal” as the country is trying to learn to coexist with the virus for the first time.

China is likely experiencing 1 million Covid infections and 5,000 virus deaths every day as it grapples with the biggest outbreak the world has ever seen, reports said.

Another photo showed a dead body lying on the road in Shenyang city.

“In Shenyang city, as the crematory is already full and cannot hold more bodies, someone chose to leave the body on the ground in front of the crematory and left,” the activist captioned the photo on Twitter.

On Thursday evening, AFP visited a crematorium in the city’s south and witnessed 40 bodies being unloaded in two hours. The relatives of several of the deceased said the deaths were due to Covid.

One woman said her elderly relative, who was suffering from cold symptoms, had tested negative but died after they could not get an ambulance in time.

Zeng shared a picture of Chongqing Medical University Hospital in Chongqing, Sichuan province on Thursday where people are getting treatment while lying on the hospital floor.

She pointed out that the surge inside the hospital is so much that there is a shortage of medical staff who can attend to patients individually.

“There are no more beds inside the Chongqing Medical University Hospital, and the elderly are starting to lie on the floor. The machines that are on the chests are used to replace the human hand to press the heart,” she said.

On Wednesday, she alleged that the Chinese authorities tried to cover up the death of a graduate student of a hospital affiliated with Sichuan University, after he was forced to work despite being tested Covid-19 positive.

“Disturbing! According to Chinese social media, 23 y/o Chen Jiahui, a graduate student at West China Hospital affiliated with Sichuan University, was forced to work after testing COVID positive. After 3 days of high-intensity work, on Dec 13, he suddenly passed out,” she said in a tweet and shared a video.

China is battling a wave of infections that has hit the elderly hard, but has officially logged only a handful of deaths from the coronavirus after the government redefined the criteria by which Covid deaths are counted.

Under China’s new definition of Covid deaths, only those who die of respiratory failure — and not pre-existing conditions exacerbated by the virus — are counted.

That means many of the dead in Chongqing — and across the country — are no longer even being registered as coronavirus victims.

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