Hong Kong is running out of coffins as it fights a devastating surge in coronavirus deaths.
Kwok Hoi-bong, president of the Funeral Business Association, said that the city would use up its remaining 300 coffins in the next two to three days. Families would have to delay funeral services if the problem was not addressed, he added.
The shortage followed the lockdown of the pandemic-stricken mainland city of Shenzhen, cutting off a crucial overland route for supplies to Hong Kong.
It further underlined the grim situation in the territory, where the pandemic’s fifth wave has killed 4,847 people — more than the 3,869 who died from the virus in the central city of Wuhan during the initial outbreak in early 2020, and more than the 4,636 officially reported deaths in mainland China.
The city’s crematoriums are said to be operating at full capacity. Nearly one million people in the territory, of a population of 7.5 million, are known to have been infected and experts say the actual number is much larger because of underreporting.
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The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department told local media that it had asked the mainland authorities to treat coffins as “essential supplies”, along with food and medicine.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said this morning that two consignments of coffins were being sent by sea.
In China, health authorities have relaxed Covid treatment requirements as the country battles an Omicron surge. It reported more than 3,000 new community infections overnight.
Under the new policy, people with mild symptoms will no longer be taken to hospital but will be put into group isolation and will only be sent to hospital if their condition worsens. The new policy also lowers the CT (cycle threshold) value, making it slightly easier for a person to have a negative test result.
Health professionals have hailed the new policy as pragmatic, saying it would help to reduce pressures on healthcare workers.
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“It reduces the hospitalisation time . . . which helps to better allocate medical resources,” Lu Hongzhou, a doctor in Shenzhen, told the party-run Global Times newspaper.
However, the adjustments are no indication that China will give up its attempt to stop the spread of the virus with harsh lockdowns and restrictions under its “zero-Covid” policy.
“The Chinese people cannot afford, the country’s medical system cannot afford, if tens of millions or more people should get infected,” an editorial in the Global Times read. “We must learn to play piano with ten fingers. While we are building strong defence against the pandemic, we must minimise impact on businesses and daily life and maintain the vitality of the economy and the society as much as possible.”
The state broadcaster yesterday showed CCTV of dozens of giant cranes assembling “temporary hospitals” in northeastern Jilin province, which has reported more than 5,000 cases over the past week.
Shanghai has closed school campuses and this week began locking down individual residential compounds with cases or suspected close contacts for at least 48 hours for testing in a targeted approach, as fatigue with zero-Covid develops.
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The authorities said that in the coming days they would also begin locking down and testing an unspecified number of “key areas” in Shanghai, suggesting an expanded test mandate across the city of 25 million people.
Although China has a vaccination rate of nearly 90 per cent, Chinese experts said that not enough elderly people had received boosters. It is also unclear how well Chinese vaccines reduce the risk of developing the disease caused by the Omicron variant.
