In Beijing, funeral homes and crematoriums are busy as COVID spreads

Hearses bearing the dead lined the driveway to a designated COVID-19 crematorium in the Chinese capital on Saturday while workers at the city's dozen funeral homes were busier than normal, days after China reversed tight pandemic restrictions, Qazet.az reports.

In recent days in Beijing the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand as more workers and drivers testing positive for coronavirus call in sick.

China is yet to officially report any COVID deaths since Dec. 7 when the country abruptly ended many key tenets of its zero-COVID policy that had been championed by President Xi Jinping, following unprecedented public protests against the protocol.

A U.S.-based research institute said this week that the country could see an explosion of cases and over a million people in China could die of COVID in 2023. A sharp surge in deaths would test authorities' efforts to move China away from endless testing, lockdowns and heavy travel restrictions, and realign with a world that has largely reopened to live with the disease.