Apart from having to queue at cemeteries to bury Covid-19
victims, morticians who spoke to the Daily News On Sunday yesterday also warned
that they were likely to run out of mortuary space soon, due to the soaring
Covid-19 deaths.
Both the Zimbabwe Association of Funeral Assurers (Zafa)
and individual funeral assurance companies, said they had not expected to be
dealing with such high numbers of coronavirus burials at this point. All this
comes as Zimbabwe continues to battle to contain the deadly respiratory
disease, which has killed scores of Zimbabweans since the turn of the new year.
On Friday, Manicaland Provincial Affairs minister, Ellen
Gwaradzimba, was among 30 people who succumbed to the novel coronavirus — whose
national death toll is now approaching 700. Moonlight Funeral Services was
among the country’s biggest funeral parlours which confirmed to the Daily News
yesterday that Covid-19 deaths had stretched players in the life assurance
industry.
Its services director, Charity Mungofa, said that it was
increasingly getting difficult, as a result, to bury Covid-19 victims within
the stipulated 48 hours due to congestion at graveyards.
“At most cemeteries now, it’s becoming complicated because
of the numbers. We used to take just a day to bury a person, but it has since
changed and it now takes two days.
Here, we are having an average of 18 burials per day. Of
those 18, about six would have succumbed to coronavirus.
“In some cases at most cemeteries, graves … are no longer
enough to cater for all deaths daily. We used to book a place today and bury a
person the following the day, but all that has changed.
“We now have a backlog and we are now keeping the bodies in
mortuaries, something that is now exposing our employees to Covid-19,” Mungofa told the
Daily News On Sunday.
She also revealed that some employees of funeral parlours
had contracted coronavirus due to the increased exposure brought about by
soaring deaths.
“We have a few cases of employees who have contracted
Covid-19 and they are isolated at home. In such cases, the companies have
chipped in by testing members regularly,” Mungofa added.
Surprisingly, she also said, the rapidly increasing
Covid-19 deaths had impacted negatively on the finances of funeral parlours.
“Financially, it’s really impacting us negatively. You find
that there are issues to do with PPE (personal protective equipment) which were
not even paid for by policyholders.
“We are buying our own PPE because we are treating every
death as Covid-19, to protect our employees because they are the ones who are
conducting removals. These PPE are very expensive and it’s something that is
affecting companies big time,”
Mungofa further explained to the Daily News On Sunday. She
also said that most parlours were now grappling with storage space, as their
mortuaries were not designed to store so many bodies.
In addition, she said, the advent of Covid-19 had also
created other problems for them as it was difficult to remove bodies of those
who would have died at home — because police were wary of risks posed by the
spread of coronavirus.
“In terms of body removals, we are overwhelmed. Our
policyholders and their dependents are dying in numbers. So, we are
overwhelmed. “People are dying in their homes and getting their bodies to the
mortuary has since become a huge issue.
Police, for fear of their lives I guess, are taking their
time to be involved. “For instance, when a death is reported to the police,
they are expected to attend immediately for paperwork to allow undertakers to
take over, but presently it’s difficult.
“The procedure has become too complicated and at times it’s
now even taking up to five hours to collect a dead body,” Mungofa told the
Daily News On Sunday.
On his part, national police spokesperson, Paul Nyathi,
said law enforcers were trying their best to follow all necessary Health
ministry protocols. “All body clearances are undertaken in line with protocols
by WHO (the World Health Organisation)
and the Health ministry.
“We urge those that have grievances to approach police or
the Health ministry so that if there are any grey areas these can be sorted
out,” he said. Zafa general manager, Taka Svosve, also confirmed to the Daily
News On Sunday that the spiralling Covid-19 deaths and infections were
threatening the viability of funeral parlours.
“If Covid-19 cases continue to spike, there is a
possibility of an unusual spike in claims on funeral policies, meaning an
unexpected hit on cash flow and other resources for funeral assurers.
Naturally, this Covid-19 situation also creates anxiety amongst funeral parlour
staff, like everywhere else. The fear of the known or unknown again naturally
takes grip. Our members are, however, maintaining 24/7 vigilance on the safety
of their staff in light of this Covid-19
pandemic,” Svosve said.
While representatives of funeral parlours were reluctant to
share the actual numbers of Covid-19 burials that they were doing, investigations
by the Daily News On Sunday revealed that in Harare alone, funeral companies
were handling at least 25 “Covid-19 burials” a day.
In off the record-briefings with employees at the main
cemeteries in the capital, undertakers confirmed that this figure approximated
the reality on the ground.
“Here, we are having an average of 18 burials per day. Of
those 18, about six would have succumbed to coronavirus. We were actually
overwhelmed last Sunday as we had to deal with 45 burials, of which 10 cases
were a result of Covid-19,” an undertaker at one of the Harare City Council
cemeteries told the Daily News On Sunday.
Another undertaker said: “Daily we are handling an average
of 16 burials, seven of which will be of Covid-19. What we are doing here is
that all coronavirus burials take place after 3pm to avoid contact”. The
undertakers said at times cemeteries would be “completely overwhelmed”,
resulting in burial backlogs at mortuaries.
Amid the runaway cases of Covid-19 cases, Vice President
Constantino Chiwenga urged Zimbabweans on Friday not to panic, but to be even
more vigilant in their daily lives — as the country reels from the second wave
of the lethal coronavirus.
This came in the wake of Gwaradzimba’s death, who became
the second minister to die from coronavirus — after the former Lands,
Agriculture, Water and Rural Resettlement minister, Perrance Shiri, also
succumbed to
the disease in July
last year. Shiri, a liberation struggle stalwart and former military commander
— who was born Bigboy Samson Chikerema before he joined the war of independence
in the 1970s — endured a difficult and lonely death in his car, as he tried in
vain to drive himself to a hospital for treatment.
Chiwenga — who is also Health and Child Care minister —
said authorities were doing all they could to manage the disease, further
rejecting social media chatter that the country did not have adequate beds and
equipment to deal with Covid-19 patients.
“It would be … an exaggeration at this stage, to suggest
that our Health institutions are overwhelmed by cases of Covid-19. Admittedly,
the recent escalation of cases of the pandemic in the country caused a high
demand for healthcare. “Nonetheless, let me re-assure citizens that Zimbabwe’s
public and private health institutions still have adequate capacity to offer
health services to all patients,” Chiwenga said.
“It is also well-documented that among the active cases
recorded so far … two to three percent warranted hospitalisation with
specialised treatment.
“At least 12 to 13 percent required discharge within two to
three days of admission … while the bulk of 85 percent only required
self-isolation,” Chiwenga added. Daily News
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