Chinese families ‘start burning bodies of their loved ones in the streets’ amid Covid explosion

Families have begun to burn the bodies of their loved ones in the streets of China, footage has appeared to show, amid an explosion of Covid-19 infections.

Beijing’s axing of its stringent virus curbs last month has unleashed the virus on a 1.4 billion population that has little natural immunity having been shielded from the virus since it emerged in the central city of Wuhan three years ago. 

Many funeral homes and hospitals say they are overwhelmed, and international health experts predict 2.1 million Covid deaths in the coming months, although China has reported five or fewer deaths a day since the policy U-turn.

Residents have expressed anger over funeral homes increasing the cost of cremations amid the surge in demand, which has seemingly led to people taking the matter into their own hands and carrying out their own cremations in the streets.

Families have begun to burn the bodies of their loved ones in the streets of China, video (pictured left and right) has appeared to show, amid an explosion of Covid-19 infections

Footage from China purportedly shows the makeshift cremations.

In one clip, a wooden casket is seen to the side of a pathway being burned on a small pyre. The area where the burning is taking place appears to be rural.

However, in another clip said to be in Shanghai, a group of residents can be seen standing in a car park between high-rise apartment block, around what appears to be another makeshift pyre.

Other similar clips have surfaced from the city, with two more clips being posted online showing bodies being burned in a similar way. In both cases, residents laid the body out on bed sheets, and drew a chalk outline around the pyre.

In one, the mourners fanned the flames with tree branches in the city where – it was reported yesterday – a doctor at one of the city’s hospitals estimated 70 percent of Shanghai’s 25 million population had been infected with Covid.

Meanwhile, a screenshot posted to Weibo (the Chinese social media platform) showed a resident informing his neighbours in a text message that his father had died, and that he had been unable to afford the cremation service. As a result, he told them, he would ‘find an open space’ to burn his father’s remains.

Pictured: A wooden coffin is seen burning in a rural area of China next to a pathway

Pictured: Residents in Shanghai stand around a makeshift pyre in a car park

Pictured: A post on Chinese social media shown residents (left) standing around a makeshift pyre. On the right, a message a resident sent to his neighbours telling them he planned to burn his father’s body in an open space in their community

According to Bloomberg, another Chinese user wrote on Weibo that citizens ‘couldn’t afford to live under lockdown. And now we can’t afford to die,’ bemoaning the rising funeral costs.

The news outlet spoke to a Beijing funeral service provider, who told them that a cremation can be arranged in three days at the cost of 68,000 yuan, while a same day service would cost 88,000. Normally, it would cost a few thousand.

‘Bodies are overflowing everywhere,’ the employee told Bloomberg. 

The scenes of burning pyres are reminiscent of India in 2021, when the Delta Covid-19 variant ran rampant through the country, killing tens of thousands.

As crematoriums were overwhelmed, citizens were forced to burn their dead on makeshift funeral pyres, resulting in some of the most gut-wrenching images to emerge from the global pandemic. At the time, Beijing’s media mocked countries forced to incinerate their corpses in public spaces such as town squares. 

Now, China’s own citizens are faced with the same reality. 

London-based health researcher Airfinity believes more than 9,000 people are dying from the disease each day in China. This number could rise to 25,000 as people start to travel around the country for Lunar New Year celebrations. 

Airfinity expects China’s cases 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.

Chinese officials claim only 5,250 deaths have been recorded throughout the entire pandemic.

‘That is totally ridiculous,’ 66-year-old Beijing resident who only gave his last name Zhang said of the official death toll. ‘Four of my close relatives died. That’s only from one family. I hope the government will be honest with the people and the rest of the world about what’s really happened here.’

China has rejected international scepticism of its statistics as politically motivated attempts to smear its achievements in fighting the virus.

‘China and the Chinese people will surely win the final victory against the epidemic,’ the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, said in an editorial, rebutting criticism of China’s three years of isolation, lockdowns and testing that triggered historic protests late last year.

Meanwhile, global health officials have been trying to determine the facts of China’s raging COVID-19 outbreak and how to prevent a further spread. 

Patients on stretchers are seen packed in at Tongren hospital in Shanghai on January 3, 2023

Patient wait for treatment at Peking University Third Hospital on January 3, 2023 in Beijing

And on Wednesday, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper rallied citizens for a ‘final victory’ over the virus.

Having lifted the restrictions, Beijing is hitting back against decisions by some countries to insist that visitors from China show pre-departure COVID tests, saying the rules were unreasonable and lacked a scientific basis.

Japan became the latest country to require a pre-boarding negative test, joining the United States, Australia and others. European Union health officials are due to meet on Wednesday to discuss a coordinated response to China travel.

China, which has been largely shut off from the world since the pandemic began, will stop requiring inbound travellers to quarantine from Jan. 8. But it will still demand that arriving passengers get tested before they begin their journeys.

World Health Organization officials met Chinese scientists on Tuesday amid concern over the accuracy of China’s data on the spread and evolution of its outbreak.

The U.N. agency had invited the scientists to present detailed data on viral sequencing, hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations.

The WHO would release information about the talks later, probably at a Wednesday briefing, its spokesperson said.

Last month, Reuters reported that the WHO had not received data from China on new COVID hospitalisations since Beijing’s policy shift, prompting some health experts to question whether it might be concealing the extent of its outbreak.

China reported five new COVID deaths for Tuesday, bringing the official death toll to 5,258, very low by global standards.

British-based health data firm Airfinity has said about 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from COVID.

There were chaotic scenes at Shanghai’s Zhongshan hospital where patients, many of them elderly, jostled for space on Tuesday in packed halls between makeshift beds where people used oxygen ventilators and got intravenous drips.

With COVID disruptions slowing China’s $17 trillion economy to its lowest growth in nearly half a century, investors are now hoping policymakers will intervene to counter the slide.

China’s yuan hovered at a four-month high against the dollar on Wednesday, after its finance minister pledged to step up fiscal expansion this year, days after the central bank said it would implement more policy support for the economy.

Tongren hospital in Shanghai, pictured, has been overwhelmed by patients after Beijing’s ‘zero-Covid’ hardline approach was abruptly loosened last month

People wearing face masks take a rest as they tend to their elderly relatives at a hospital in Beijing. One patient is seen in a makeshift bed on the floor

Patients in beds line the hallway in Zhongshan Hospital, Shanghai. Experts say the majority of the city’s 25 million people may have been infected

Despite the restrictions by some countries on visitors from China, interest in outbound travel from the world’s most populous country is cranking up, state media has calimed.

Before the pandemic, global spending by Chinese tourists exceeded $250 billion a year, but that was halted when Beijing closed the country’s borders.

Bookings for international flights from China have risen by 145% year-on-year in recent days, the government-run China Daily newspaper reported, citing data from travel platform Trip.com.

The number of flights to and from China is still a fraction of pre-COVID levels. The government has said it will increase flights and make it easier for people to travel.

Thailand expects at least five million Chinese arrivals this year, its tourism authority said. More than 11 million Chinese visited Thailand in 2019, nearly a third of its total visitors. But there are already signs that an increase in travel from China could pose problems abroad.

South Korea, which began testing travellers from China on Monday, said more than a fifth of the test results were positive.

Authorities there were searching for one Chinese national who tested positive but went missing while awaiting quarantine. The person, who was not identified, could face up to a year in prison or fines of 10 million won ($7,840).

A queue of cars stretches down a road outside the crematorium in the city of Suzhou

It was reported yesterday that Chinese health officials, in a rare admission in the authoritarian country, had said China was facing a ‘huge’ number of deaths.

Jiao Yahui, a National Health Commission official, told state broadcaster China Central Television: ‘We have a huge base, so what people feel is that the severe cases, the critical cases or the fatalities are increasing.

‘As far as this wave is concerned, what people have felt is the absolute number, not the low percentage [of deaths to total infections]. Relative to the rest of the world, the infection peaks we are faced with across the country are not unusual.’

Tong Zhaohui, a vice-president of Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing, agreed that the number was large but said the relative percentage of deaths may still be low. ‘Think how many people around you have been infected but how many have developed critical cases or pneumonia. I think everyone has the idea,’ he said.

Chen Erzhen, vice president at Ruijin Hospital and a member of Shanghai’s Covid expert advisory panel, estimated that the majority of the city’s 25million people may have been infected. 

On Monday, China’s president Xi Jinping finally admitted the mistakes of his draconian zero-Covid policy which failed to contain the virus and sparked the country’s first widespread mass protests in decades.

On Monday, China’s president Xi Jinping, pictured, admitted the mistakes of his draconian zero-Covid policy which failed to contain the virus

The premier acknowledged ‘unprecedented difficulties and challenges’ in his New Year’s Eve address to the nation and said it was ‘only natural’ that his harsh lockdown measures were met with resistance.

Xi dropped the zero-Covid measures on December 7 but his new strategy of living with the virus has caused infections to skyrocket, with infections currently peaking in Beijing. In the first 20 days of December, the government’s top health authority estimates a staggering 248 million people – equivalent to 18 per cent of the population – contracted the virus.

In his address, he said China is now in a new phase of Covid control which is ‘optimised’ to protect lives and the economy.

He added: ‘Since Covid-19 struck, we have put the people first and put life first all along. With extraordinary efforts, we have prevailed over unprecedented difficulties and challenges, and it has not been an easy journey for anyone. We have now entered a new phase of Covid response where tough challenges remain.’

‘What matters is that we build consensus through communication and consultation. ‘Let’s make an extra effort to pull through as perseverance and solidarity mean victory.’

The speech was a major shift from the celebratory tone in October when he secured a third term in power at his party congress.