China's rising death toll from the massive COVID-19 outbreak has left crematoria across the country overcrowded. This was reported by the Bloomberg agency with reference to employees of the Chinese funeral industry and experts. One of the interlocutors of the agency declared about "paralysis of the system".

 Employees of crematoriums in Beijing and Shanghai said that the bodies of those who died from COVID-19 are cremated around the clock, and the nearest free place for cremation can only be reserved for mid-January. One of the crematoriums in Longhua (Shenzhen district) said that more than 500 bodies arrive every day.

 Bloomberg notes that the shadow business of cremation has recently developed in China. While cremation used to cost several thousand yuan, in January some crematoria started offering cremation for tens of thousands of yuan. So, cremation on the day of death will cost 88,000 yuan (870,000 rubles), the agency writes.

 A sharp increase in the incidence of coronavirus infection began in China at the beginning of December, shortly after the decision was made in the country to relax quarantine measures due to protests against lockdowns.

 Amid the outbreak, Chinese authorities have stopped publishing daily data on COVID-19. According to unconfirmed official data, millions of Chinese citizens began to be infected with COVID-19 every day.

 According to the estimates of the British analytical company Airfinity, at the end of December in China, probably about 9 thousand people per day died from the coronavirus infection. Airfinity predicts that the death toll will peak on January 23 at about 25,000 people per day, and from December the total number of deaths will reach 584,000.

 The European Union has offered China free COVID-19 vaccines to help Beijing contain a massive outbreak of the disease.

 Due to a wave of COVID-19 infections in China, a number of countries last week approved mandatory testing for travelers from China, including Italy, the United States, Japan, India and Malaysia.