Overwhelmed by Omicron, Hong Kong runs out of space for its dead

Officials have deployed makeshift refrigerators to store bagged bodies that had been piling up in the crowded corridors of public hospitals. Crematoria work around the clock and coffins are running short. Authorities have placed 50 repurposed storage containers in a parking deck near an overflowing public mortuary to house 2,300 bodies.

Because victims died from an infectious disease, grieving relatives are unable to claim their dead to dress and embalm them for funerals, where traditionally they are laid out in open caskets so mourners can pay their respects…

The city’s average daily Covid death rate in the week ended Tuesday was 37.64 per million residents. That is higher than peaks recorded in hot spots such as Spain and the U.K. earlier in the pandemic, and three times the U.S. peak, hit in early 2021, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data project.

Hong Kong has recorded almost 5,000 fatalities since Dec. 31, after registering just over 200 in the first two years of the pandemic.

“To be very honest, it’s uncontained,” said Siddharth Sridhar, a clinical virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “It’s been a very, very sharp peak. It’s almost like a needle.”