Delayed Covid-19 funerals spell heartache for Hong Kong families, with some bodies decomposing after weeks in temporary storage facilities

Funeral parlours say they are overwhelmed by surge in deaths and question temporary mortuary facilities

But government department says funeral halls are fully booked only on weekends and public holidays

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Workers transfer the body of a Covid-19 victim from a makeshift morgue outside Fu Shan Public Mortuary in March. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 4:00pm, 23 Apr 2022Updated: 5:20pm, 23 Apr 2022

Jan Chan cannot forget her final glimpse of her 78-year-old grandfather who died of Covid-19 at Tuen Mun Hospital on March 13, at the height of Hong Kong’s massive fifth wave of infections.

His face was shrunken and had turned slightly black, and his body, wrapped in plastic, lay on a cold table at the hospital mortuary. It was a month after his death.

Chan’s family had failed to secure a place at a funeral home and could only arrange for simple Taoist rites to be performed outside the hospital for her grandfather on April 15.

“He could have looked great at his funeral, but he ended up looking like this. I was very sad and we could do nothing about it,” said Chan, 28, a clerk. “Of course we would love to provide the best for our family members, even when they have died.”

The surge in deaths during the fifth wave, which began last December, left funeral parlours unable to cope and fully booked till late May. By the time families were able to proceed with funeral arrangements, some were shocked to find that their loved ones’ bodies had begun to decompose. The temporary storage units set up by the government were not designed to keep bodies for very long.