With the Western Cape carrying the highest burden of fatal Covid-19 cases, the City of Cape Town has been preparing for “an increased demand in burial spaces.
One of the way to cope with the increased demand is cremation and the city has called on the public to opt for cremation over burial, and to consider weekday funerals to avoid demand outstripping capacity on weekends.
Other SA cities are following the same guidelines, but another potential challenge is body storage.
Last week, epidemiological modellers predicted that 40,000 South Africans would die of Covid-19 by November this year.
In New York, makeshift morgues — refrigerated containers on the back of trucks — have become a common sight on suburban streets.
In Madrid, Spain, last month, a popular ice rink was repurposed as a morgue, and in London, the Muslim community has clubbed together to establish temporary morgues at mosques.
In Italy, some hard-hit northern cities had no choice but to send the bodies of the deceased to small towns for cremation after morgues were overflowing with bodies.