PRETORIA, South Africa (CU)_South African funeral home directors say they are running out of coffins as the country is overwhelmed by the dramatic surge in COVID-19 deaths.
The highly infectious new variant of the virus found in South Africa has caused a 120 per cent surge in virus-induced deaths — with a grim milestone of 844 deaths and 20,000 new infections registered in 24 hours on Wednesday (Jan 6).
South African funeral director Thabiso Maumakoe, who runs the Tshipi-Noto funeral home in Delmas, east of Johannesburg, said he and his staff are “scared” of being infected by this new variant.
“We are aware that this is a different variant and just like everyone else, we are scared as a business and human beings,” he told SABC News. “We have parents and the elderly, so there is definitely fear within the team.”
The National Funeral Practitioners Association of South Africa says they have never witnessed anything like this before.
“It is something you have never seen before. We have run out of coffins, we have run out of space at the mortuary,” the president of the Association, Muzi Hlengwa, said.
“Some funerals have had to be postponed because there is no burial space. We even have cremations done at night,” he added.
The new South African coronavirus mutant, called 501.V2, which was announced in Cape Town in December last year, is believed to be a more extreme variant than Britain’s new COVID strain, since it has substantial changes in the structure of the protein.
New daily infections in South Africa soared from fewer than 3,000 a day at the start of December, to more than 15,000 per day in the past week, and it is reported that of these cases, the mutant accounts for up to 90 per cent.
Several countries, including the UK, Germany, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have banned travellers from South Africa in an attempt to contain the spread of the new strain. However, this new variant has already been detected in two locations in Britain in people who had recently visited the African nation.
