Cities across China also scrambling to install hospital beds and build fever-screening clinics amid a widening COVID-19 outbreak.

Crematoriums in cities across China are straining to deal with an influx of bodies amid a widening COVID-19 outbreak, media reports said, as authorities scrambled to install hospital beds and build fever-screening clinics.

“The number of bodies picked up in recent days is many times more than previously,” said a staff who did not give their name. “We are very busy, there is no more cold storage space for bodies,” they added. When asked if the deaths were related to COVID-19, the staff told AFP to ask the “leaders in charge”.

Some health experts estimate that 60 percent of the nation of 1.4 billion people could be infected over the coming months, and that more than two million could die. The Communist Party-owned Global Times meanwhile said experts estimate that about that 2.7 million people with COVID-19 would require care at Intensive Care Units (ICUs).