Beijing: Funeral homes in China's COVID-ravaged capital Beijing, a city of 22 million people, scrambled on Saturday to meet the demand for funeral and cremation services as workers and drivers who tested positive for the novel coronavirus called in sick.
After declaring that the Omicron strain has weakened and facing unprecedented public protests against President Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy, China abruptly changed its COVID management protocols more than a week ago.
China is realigning with a world that has largely reopened to live with COVID, moving away from endless testing, lockdowns, and heavy travel restrictions.
As cities across China brace for their first waves of infections, China has advised its 1.4 billion-strong population to nurse mild symptoms at home unless they become severe.
Sick workers have impacted the staffing of services ranging from restaurants and courier firms to Beijing's roughly a dozen funeral parlors, which has yet to report any COVID deaths since the policies changed on December 7.
"We have fewer cars and employees now," a Miyun Funeral Home employee told Reuters, adding that there was a growing backlog of demand for cremation services.
"Many of our employees tested positive."
It was unclear whether the difficulty in meeting the increased demand for cremation was due to an increase in COVID-related deaths.
According to a staff member at Huairou Funeral Home, a body had to wait three days before being cremated.
"You can bring the body here yourself; it's been busy recently," said the staffer.
The Chinese Ministry of Health last reported COVID deaths in Shandong and Sichuan provinces on December 3. The last fatality in the Chinese capital was reported on November 23.
Nonetheless, Chinese media reported on Friday that two veteran state media journalists died in Beijing after contracting COVID-19, making them among the first known deaths since China repealed the majority of its zero-COVID policies.
The National Health Commission reported no change in its official COVID death tally of 5,235 on Saturday.
According to new projections from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation in the United States, China's abrupt relaxation of its ultra-strict policies could result in an increase in cases and over a million deaths through 2023. (IHME).
Cases in China would peak around April 1, with 322,000 deaths, according to the report.
"There're long queues of hearses here, and it's hard to say when there'll be available slots," said a staffer at Dongjiao Funeral Home.
"Normal deaths," the staffer said, when asked if the deaths were COVID-related.
The lack of reported COVID deaths for the past 10 days have stirred debate on social media over data disclosure, fuelled also by a dearth of statistics over hospitalisations and the number of seriously ill.
"Why can't these statistics be found? What's going on? Did they not tally them or they just aren't announcing them?" one netizen on Chinese social media asked.
China stopped reporting asymptomatic cases on Wednesday, citing a lack of PCR testing among people with no symptoms, which made calculating the total count difficult.
Official figures have become untrustworthy as a result of the relaxation of zero-COVID policies across the country.
To deal with worsening COVID infections across China, local education authorities in Shanghai, more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of Beijing, ordered most schools to hold classes online beginning Monday.
Shanghai Disney Resort said on Saturday that entertainment offerings may be reduced to a smaller workforce, though the theme park was still open for business.