Zero cremation of Covid-19 bodies over weekend in East Delhi's crematoriums as city's coronavirus cases dip

By Gaurav Arora
New Delhi [India], June 8 : For the first time in nearly two months, no bodies of Covid-19 victims were brought to the crematoriums in east Delhi last weekend on Saturday and Sunday.
The crematoriums in the city had witnessed a large number of corpses of people who had succumbed to the fourth wave of the deadly Covid-19 virus outbreak that had gripped the national capital from April this year.
According to East MCD records, no Covid-19 related cremations took place on June 5 and 6 and the number of cremations during the rest of the days were also very less compared to the situation over the last two months when the city's crematorium workers were overwhelmed with hundreds of bodies of those who had succumbed to Covid.
Speaking to ANI, Mayor of East MCD Nirmal Jain said, "I thank God for this relief to people. I am daily getting the data from cremation centres. From past 2-3 days, there are almost zero cases of cremation as per the COVID protocol."
"There is some relief now than before. We did not receive Covid bodies for the last two to four days. Earlier, we used to cremate 25 to 27 Covid bodies every day," said Karkardooma cremation ground worker Virender.
Another crematorium worker Rohit, who is a CNG operator at Karkardooma cremation ground, said: "Now the situation is quite normal. But earlier, there was no space even for standing there at the cremation centre. The situation was very bad. I pray people do not see such a situation again."
Jain said the situation was grim earlier.
"I have seen the situation when people were approaching for cremation...there were long waiting hours at cremation centres. We had to arrange 200 separate spaces for the cremation of COVID bodies. We made extra space in the parking space of our cremation centre for this purpose," he said.
The cremation grounds of East Delhi had seen a peak of 100 Covid funerals on May 1, the highest ever recorded. Over 50 bodies were brought to the crematoria of East Delhi daily in the last two weeks of April and the first week of May.
The North Delhi MCD reported 10 cremations while the South Delhi MCD reported 9 cremations on Monday.
At present, over 1,117 spaces are reserved at 28 cremation sites of MCDs for last rites as per COVID rules.
Delhi on Monday reported 231 new Covid-19 cases, the lowest since March 2 and a dip in positivity rate to 0.36. Delhi had registered the biggest spike with 28,395 new coronavirus cases on April 20 since the pandemic began last year.