Staff reporter – The Zimbabwe Daily
Johannesburg, South Africa – The COVID-19 pandemic is beginning to have a significant toll on South Africa’s funeral parlours.
With over 5 000 COVID-19 related deaths and an average mortality rate of 100 per day many funeral parlours have had to procure containers to use as makeshift mortuaries.
“COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our funeral parlours. It’s now getting difficult to cope, we are now using containers to add up to our already existing mortuaries.
Another problem, post mortem results are taking between two to five days before they arrive, so the problem is when a body comes it’s not definite whether the cause of death is COVID-19 related or not.
With that in mind, sometimes we unknowingly mix the non COVID-19 corpses with those with COVID-19 which is a very difficult scenario especially when the post mortem results come in.
Moreso, our undertakers have been contracting COVID-19 primarily because of the issue of post mortem results.
The way you treat a COVID-19 corpse and a non COVID-19 one is very different it’s a different process altogether,” said South Africa Funeral Practitioners Association president, Libo Mnisi.
