The long lines and stacks of urns greeting family members of the dead at funeral homes in Wuhan, China, are spurring questions about the true scale of casualties at the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, renewing pressure on a Chinese government struggling to control its containment narrative.
The families of those who succumbed to the coronavirus in the city, where the disease first emerged, were allowed to pick up their cremated ashes at eight funeral homes last week.
As they did, photographs circulated on Chinese social media of thousands of urns being ferried in.
Photo: AFP
Outside one funeral home, trucks shipped in about 2,500 urns on both Wednesday and Thursday last week, Chinese media outlet Caixin reported.
Another picture published by Caixin showed 3,500 urns stacked on the ground inside. It was unclear how many of the urns had been filled.
People who answered the telephone at six of the eight funeral homes in Wuhan said that they either did not have data on how many urns were waiting to be collected, or were not authorized to disclose the numbers. Calls were not answered at the other two.
Some families said that they had been forced to wait for several hours to pick up the ashes.
The photographs circulated as deaths from the coronavirus spiked in cities across the West, including Milan, Madrid and New York, where hospitals were erecting tents to handle the overflow as global infections soared.
Government data showed that 2,548 people in Wuhan had died of the coronavirus.
The announcement that a lockdown in place since January would be lifted came after China said its tally of new cases had hit zero.
It has stepped up diplomatic outreach to other nations hard hit by the coronavirus, sending some medical supplies, but some in China have been skeptical of the accuracy of the official data, particularly given Wuhan’s overwhelmed medical system, authorities’ attempts to cover up the outbreak in its initial stages and multiple revisions to the way cases were counted.
Wuhan residents on social media have demanded disciplinary action against top officials.
Many people who died had COVID-19 symptoms, but were not tested and excluded from the tally of official cases, Caixin said.
There were also patients who died of other diseases due to a lack of proper treatment when hospitals were overwhelmed dealing with those who had the coronavirus, it said.
There were 13,856 cremations in the city in the fourth quarter of last year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data from the Wuhan Civil Affairs Bureau.
That was 2,419 lower than in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The families of the deceased might not even be able to say a proper goodbye to their loved ones just yet.
The Wuhan government on Thursday last week issued a statement prohibiting individuals in the city from tomb-sweeping activities until April 30, meaning they would not be able to observe Tomb Sweeping Day this week.
Other Chinese provinces, including Guangxi and Zhejiang, have also announced similar restrictions.
Two residents of Wuhan who had lost family members to the coronavirus said online that they were informed they had to be accompanied by their employers or officials from neighborhood committees when picking up the urns, possibly as a measure against public gatherings.
“I was told by the district government to wait until further notice on when I can pick up my father’s ashes,” Wuhan resident “Xue Zai Shou Zhong” (Snow in Hand) wrote. “There is a staggered arrangement for urn collecting.”
Another netizen, “Adagier,” said that she lost her husband to the coronavirus and had since been contacted by police warning her not to be too emotional — and to stop posting online.
“I have only one demand,” she wrote. “I want to give my husband a proper burial as soon as possible.”
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