Wuhan residents believe up to 18 times the number of people died in their city from coronavirus than authorities are reporting.
The seven funeral homes serving Wuhan have reportedly been running nonstop recently, prompting one resident to say “anyone with any ability to think” knows officials are lying about the death toll.
China announced 2,535 deaths in Wuhan – the initial epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic – which was locked down for two months.
But some locals believe the number is closer to 50,000.
News website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in just one day.
“It can’t be right … because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told Radio Free Asia.
A resident surnamed Gao said the city’s seven crematoriums should have a capacity of around 2,000 bodies a day if they work around the clock.“Anyone looking at that figure will realise, anyone with any ability to think,” Gao said. “What are they talking about [2,535] people?”
“Seven crematoriums could get through more than that [in a single day].”
Some people estimate 46,800 COVID-19 victims will have been cremated, based on the capacity of the funeral homes.
Buying silence
Residents say city officials have been buying their silence with 3,000 yuan ($685) cash handouts in “funeral allowances” to make sure cremations are completed by the grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5.
“It’s to stop them keening [a traditional expression of grief]; nobody’s allowed to keen after Qing Ming has passed,” Wuhan local Chen Yaohui said.
Another resident, Hu Aizhen, lost his mother to COVID-19 and said nobody in the city believes the official death toll.
“The official number of deaths was 2,500 people … but before the epidemic began, the city’s crematoriums typically cremated around 220 people a day,” Aizhen said.
“But during the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremating bodies around the clock.”
Stamping out second wave
Mainland China has reported a drop in new coronavirus cases for the fourth consecutive day as Beijing seeks to stamp out the risk of a second wave of infections by shutting its borders to foreign travellers and cutting international flights.
The National Health Commission said on Monday that 31 new coronavirus cases were recorded on Sunday, including one locally transmitted infection, dropping from 45 cases a day earlier.
Four new deaths were reported, taking the cumulative, reported death toll in the mainland to 3304, from 81,470 infections.
The number of new infections has fallen sharply in the mainland from the peak in February.
Reopen for business
The government is now exhorting businesses and factories to reopen for business as it rolls out various stimulus to drive a recovery from what many now expect to be an outright economic contraction in January-March.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said the government would adjust support policies for small and medium-sized firms promptly as the situation developed to protect them from the impact of the coronavirus.
Chinese firms should actively resume operations and production even as coronavirus prevention efforts continue, Xi also said during a Sunday visit to Ningbo, a major port city in eastern Zhejiang province, according to state media.
No new Hubei cases
Hubei province, where the coronavirus outbreak first emerged in late 2019, “reported” no new cases for the sixth consecutive day on Sunday after the province of 60 million people lifted its traffic restrictions and resumed some domestic flights.
Beijing remains worried about the risk of a second wave of the epidemic triggered by cases involving travellers coming to China who were infected overseas.
The virus has now spread globally, infecting hundreds of thousands outside China’s borders.
China has barred foreigners from entering the country and ordered airlines to slash the number of international flights into the country.
The vast majority of the so-called imported cases reported to date have been Chinese nationals, many of whom are students.
