People losing their loved ones to COVID-19 disease are now turning to makeshift facilities that are undertaking mass burials and cremations amid a record-breaking Coronavirus surge in India.
India added a record of 3,32,730 new coronavirus cases in a span of 24 hours, taking the country’s infection tally to 1,62,63,695.
In drone footage and photos shared online, countless bodies are seen burning at a ground that has been converted into a crematorium for mass cremation of coronavirus victims.
Jitender Singh Shunty who runs a non-profit medical service, the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Sewa Dal, said as of Thursday afternoon 60 bodies, April 22, had been cremated at the makeshift facility in the parking lot.
“No-one in Delhi would have ever witnessed such a scene,” said Mr Shunty with tears in his eyes.
“Children who were five years old, 15 years old, 25 years old are being cremated. Newlyweds are being cremated. It’s difficult to watch.”
Delhi resident Nitish Kumar was forced to keep his dead mother’s body at home for nearly two days while he searched for space in the city’s crematoriums.
On Thursday, Kumar cremated his mother, who died of COVID-19, in a makeshift, mass cremation facility in a parking lot adjoining a crematorium in Seemapuri in northeast Delhi.
“I ran pillar to post but every crematorium had some reason … one said it had run out of wood,” said Kumar, wearing a mask and squinting his eyes that were stinging from the smoke blowing from the burning pyres.
