| Updated: Jan 10, 2023, 09:42 PM IST
Satellite images shared by Maxar Technologies showed the true scale of the Covid outbreak gripping the 1.4 billion population of China, as funeral homes struggle to meet up with the rising demand for their services. While one of the images shows a grassy patch of land being paved for parking lost near a funeral house, the other snaps reveal a packed parking lot– a stark contrast to the quietness of the facility just a few weeks earlier.
Satellite image captures true extent of Covid deaths in China
A new parking space was constructed within a day at a funeral home on the outskirts of Beijing, indicating the exent of Covid related deaths in China. According to state media reports, which has since been delted, the staff at the facility, who are sick, have been working overtime to cremate the plethora of bodies lined up outside their facility.
(Photograph:Agencies)
China’s struggle to cremate bodies
Satellite picture taken by Maxar on January 5 shows a packed parking lot at Kunming Funeral Home. According to reports, visitors were seen lined outside to the funeral home for hours, day and night.
(Photograph:Agencies)
Satellite image exposes true extent of Covid deaths
Maxar satellite imagery from January 3 captured a line of white vehicles along a road at a sprawling funeral home in Nanjing, a major city northwest of Shanghai. Last week, local health officials said that up to 70 percent of the city’s 26 million population had been infected witg COVID-19, and expressed confidence that its outbreak had peaked.
(Photograph:Agencies)
Has China been under-reporting its Covid cases?
Amidst reports of overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes, China has been accused by the World Health Organization (WHO) and US that it is under-representing the severity of its current Covid outbreak, as they call on Beijing to share more data about the explosive spread.
(Photograph:Agencies)
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No time to grieve in China
Funeral homes across the country have been struggling to keep up with unimaginable demand for thier services. They said that they have stopped offering memorial services altogether, allotting just a few minutes for each family to grieve.
“I have worked here for six years and it has never been this busy,” a receptionist at the Jiangnan Funeral Home in Chongqing in southwest China told the Washington Post. “The phone has basically not stopped ringing.”
Some funeral homes said they had stopped offering memorial services altogether, allotting just a few minutes for each family to grieve.
