Coronavirus: Wuhan opens its funeral homes, cemeteries so families can bury their dead

Local man Tim Wang says his mother, who died last month from Covid-19, joked last year about getting a good deal on a family plot where she would one day be reunited with her late husband

On the day she died, he wasn’t allowed into the ward to see her, so he sat on the hospital steps and cried for hours

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Thousands of people across Wuhan were this week finally allowed to collect the ashes of the loved ones they lost to Covid-19. Photo: Weibo

Published: 6:30pm, 27 Mar 2020Updated: 11:46pm, 27 Mar 2020

As Tim Wang queued up to collect his mother’s ashes from a funeral home in Wuhan along with thousands of others in the city who have lost loved ones to Covid-19, he was struck by the tranquillity of it all. Though the queue outside the building stretched several hundred metres, no one made a sound.

“I guess Wuhan people have no more tears to shed,” the 41-year-old IT manager said.

After weeks of lockdown, authorities in the central Chinese city, where the coronavirus was first detected at the end of last year, reopened eight funeral parlours and several public cemeteries on Monday to allow people to finally lay their relatives to rest.

At the home in Hankou district that Wang went to on Wednesday, he said there were long queues of people silently waiting in line.

“I waited for the whole morning to get my mum’s ashes,” he said.

Images of people queuing outside funeral homes were shared on social media. Photo: Weibo

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