Coronavirus: Wuhan residents bury their dead after confinement

The Chinese city of Wuhan, the cradle of the coronavirus, revives slowly after two months of confinement. But for the inhabitants, the first steps in the open air are devoted to a very sad ritual: burying their dead.

Under a gray sky, people with a masked face pass Tuesday the entrance to the cemetery of Biandanshan, before depositing on the stone tombs the urns containing the ashes of their relatives.

Scenes that are repeated everywhere in this city of 11 million inhabitants, where officially more than 2,500 people died from the Covid-19. Figures, like those of the whole country which evokes nearly 3300 deaths, underestimated for several experts.

The gradual lifting of confinement in Wuhan allows residents to go out to bury their loved ones who died during this period, victims of the new coronavirus or other pathologies.

At the Biandanshan cemetery, a tree-lined hill where rows of black or gray graves are placed, the authorities remain alert when faced with the always possible possibility of a second epidemic wave.

Visitors must pass through huge orange plastic barriers, take the temperature, then be sprayed with disinfectant. Some wear urns surrounded by red, gold or black fabrics.

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With a dark face, many refuse to speak to journalists. But a woman who comes to attend the burial of a loved one expresses her torpor. "I don't feel anything," she says with a blank stare. A family member died of a heart attack.

People dressed in protective gear walk the Wuhan cemetery / AFP

She gave no further details. But many Wuhans have described on the Internet the relative abandonment in which for two months found themselves patients without the Covid-19 disease.

The hospitals being saturated by the patients contaminated by the new coronavirus, the people suffering from other pathologies had to take their pain in patience. Some, for lack of care, died.

Still travel restrictions

An urn in his hands, an administrative employee explains that he was responsible for burying another man because the latter "was without family". A man draped in a blue plastic poncho remains desperately motionless at the entrance to the cemetery. He holds in his arms a huge, framed portrait of a deceased lady.

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After two months of confinement in Wuhan but also in the surrounding province of Hubei, life gradually resumes its normal course. Even though some travel restrictions remain.

The abrupt gatherings in recent days in cemeteries, crematoriums and funeral homes in the city remind us that the burial of the dead was suspended during the health crisis.

As soon as the quarantine measures were eased, relieving these suffering families was a priority for the municipality. The town hall now informs them as soon as the cremated remains of their loved ones can be recovered.

But families must then be escorted to the cemetery by municipal employees. Officially, it is a question of transporting them in the absence of public transport and of enforcing the rules of social distancing. In addition, only a limited number of people are allowed to go to the graves for the funeral. Constraints badly accepted by some.

"My poor husband's soul no longer has to wander"

Like Mr. Zhang, 52. His father, he says, was infected with coronavirus during a banal hospitalization for a broken leg ... before finally dying from Covid-19. He refused to be accompanied to the cemetery. “All this concerns only me and my family. I don't want a stranger to get involved, ”he says.

On the Internet, a Wuhan woman whose husband died of Covid-19 expressed frustration at having to wait so long before the funeral. A heartbreak shared by many residents of the city, according to social networks.

Relieved that "this hellish period for Wuhan" is over, she says that she deposited her husband's ashes in a columbarium last week. "The soul of my poor husband is no longer forced to wander. She finally has a place to land, ”she writes.