Painful reality of Covid-19’s toll on funeral parlours
Avoid indoor gatherings. Sanitise and get yourself vaccinated as soon as you can. It’s a war out there.
Mortuary assistant Doreen Mashaba prepares a coffin, 6 July 2021, at Collinge and Co Funeral Directors in Fourways. The funeral industry is overwhelmed with the number of deaths in Gauteng due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Picture: Michel Bega
Krugersdorp undertaker Mornay Engelbrecht has begun to dread the ringing of his phone at all hours of the night, because the calls mean he has to go out and collect another body; another Covid-19 victim.
His story is echoed by funeral parlours around Gauteng, which say they are already battling to cope with the bodies, as the disease rips through the community and overloads SA’s medical system.
And it’s going to get worse, as those infected in the last few days are admitted to hospitals over the next two weeks.
In some hospitals, health workers say that as soon as they have cleared away another patient who did not make it, they have to clean and make the bed for another in the queue.
In one hospital in Johannesburg, people are sitting in easy chairs in emergency rooms, on drips and being fed oxygen as they wait for beds, sometimes with as many as 40 people ahead of them in the line. This is real.
This is not disinformation we, the media, are feeding you as part of a global conspiracy. Wear your mask. Keep your distance.
Avoid indoor gatherings. Sanitise and get yourself vaccinated as soon as you can. It’s a war out there.
