Hospitals are required to perform last rites of every person dying in Covid facilities as per norms. These are done only at four crematoria in the city. (File)ON WEDNESDAY morning, a sanitary inspector makes frequent visits to a cabin behind an acrylic wall in the Covid-19 section of the state government-run Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Hospital in Rajkot. Each time he would carry plastic bags—meant for packing bodies of Covid victims. Outside the cabin, relatives peer through the window, asking when they would be able to see the remains of their loved ones. An officer and two sanitary inspectors (SIs) in the cabin ask them to wait, saying there are many bodies to handle.
By around 8.30 pm, two of the four bodies brought from the hospital are queued up at Ramnathpara crematorium. “We have two electric furnaces and one gas furnace. But the gas furnace is malfunctioning. Therefore, we just have the electric ones. It takes two hours to cremate one body… We have already cremated 17 bodies today and most of them were of Covid patients,” said Kalyan Gadhvi, a furnace operator.
Dinesh Rathod, another furnace operator, says his workload has increased three-fold. “Till lockdown, we would have four to five cremations every day. But for the past one-and-a-half months, the daily count went up to around 10. Over the past two weeks, it is around 15 to 20. We are operating our furnaces round-the-clock,” says Rathod.
Rajkot has been recording more than 100 fresh cases per day for the past one week. Till Tuesday evening, there were 1880 active cases in the district, which has emerged as a hotspot. So far, 104 patients have died due to Covid-19, government data shows.
Hospitals are required to perform last rites of every person dying in Covid facilities as per norms. These are done only at four crematoria in the city.
For those at the PDU Hospital, the job of handling bodies has grown at least three-fold since July.
Meanwhile, from a window in the cabin, a relative complains: “I have been waiting for long… you are not telling me when we will get the body to perform the last rites…”
“Please, have some patience. I have 48 bodies to handle,” replies the officer from the other side of the wall.