Cremation isn’t an easy task. It is even more difficult, if it is done for those who have died due to Covid-19. The Forty-three-year-old Ramananda Sarkar knows it better than most. In the last five months, he has helped in the funeral of around 400 Covid-19 deaths in Assam’s largest city of Guwahati.

Sarkar, who works at the Ulubari crematorium in Guwahati said that he has been cremating Covid-19 patients since April and has performed nearly 400 cremations till Tuesday. Earlier, he was used to handle around 1-2 cases on a per day basis. Since the last month, the cases have increased to 10-12 cremations daily.

In the last few weeks, there has been evidence of an increase in Covid-19 cases in Assam.
According to district officials, over 400 cremations have been performed till date at Ulubari crematorium. This crematorium handled the bulk of the load of cremations, while some cases were transferred to the Bhootnath crematorium, which is another designated place for the funeral of Covid-19 patients.
According to health officials, although the official figure of deaths due to Covid-19 is 378, the number of patients who tested positive for the disease is above 500. There are many deaths which are due to comorbidity cases. The audit board doesn’t count them and those who tested positive because of the death of other Covid-19 patients.

In last few days, there were rumours that because of an increase in fatal incidents, the bodies of Covid-19 patients are lying within the morgue for days due to lack of sufficient manpower to dispose them.
Kamrup metro administration is additionally facing a difficult time in performing the last rites of Covid-19 dead bodies. Resources have been stretched to a limit and also the team is functioning overtime. This was stated by a neurosurgeon at GNRC Hospital, Guwahati, Dr Navanil Barua.

There have been cases of huge delays because of piling up of cases of deaths due to Covid. The number of deaths is still increasing, which will increase the waiting time for dead bodies of other Covid victims. So many bodies are not being handed over to relatives.

The district administration said that there was a problem because of laxity from private hospitals in informing DAB about deaths due to Covid.