Sanjay, a priest at the Delhi crematorium dealing with bodies of people who died due to COVID -19, says that he has lost the count of the bodies that are being cremated daily at the facility and the crematorium has now taken the parking area under it as a spot to cremate dead bodies, according a report by AFP.

He said that they start the cremations in the morning and continue past midnight next to the burning pyres and piles of ash. Families silently sit alongside the road and wait for their relatives, wrapped in white cloth and garlands of marigold flowers, turn.

He witnesses dozens of wailing ambulances bringing in the bodies. The houses that overlook the crematorium live with the stench of burning bodies and cries of the families.

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Hospitals in the country are being stretched to breaking point by an explosion in coronavirus cases with people dying outside their doors or at home due to a lack of beds, drugs and oxygen, reports AFP.

According to AFP, crematoriums are working overtime, their chimneys cracking and iron frames melting from constant use. Wood is reportedly in short supply in places and some families are told to bring their own to burn.

Many crematoriums and graveyards say the official death toll from the virus comes nowhere close to reflecting the additional number of bodies they are dealing with.

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For the past three days the crematorium in the Seemapuri area of northeast Delhi has been performing more than 100 funerals a day, and has run out of space.

“We tried to accommodate cremations on the walkways and wherever we could find space but the bodies were coming endlessly,” coordinator Jitender Singh Shanty, in a yellow turban, blue hazmat suit and lanyard, told AFP.

“We had to request authorities to allow us to extend the facility to the parking lot,” the Sikh says, orange flames licking up off pyres behind him as night falls.

Shanty says they have cremated around 600 bodies since the beginning of the month and that families now have to wait hours to perform the last rites.

“If things don’t improve then we might be forced to perform the cremations on the road as there is no space left now.”