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  • China.First phase of the opening of Wuhan: queues to collect the ashes of the dead

As Beijing proclaims to the world that it has won the battle against Covid-19, voices contrary to this speech begin to appear, especially from Wuhan, the main focus where this already pandemic disease emerged in early December.

According to official data from the Xi Jinping Government, the death toll in Wuhan is 2,548 people. However, various media critical of the government, such as Radio Free Asia (RFA) or 'Caixin', collect testimonies from residents of this city who estimate that the actual death toll is much higher.

With images of hundreds of urns waiting to be collected and queues of more than 5 hours to recover the remains of those missing during the epidemic, it is estimated that up to eight funeral companies in Wuhan (where 11 million people live) have delivered 500 urns to families every day, since March 23, which would imply that the figure of 2,500 deaths is not real. "They started returning ashes on Monday [a week ago] and the incinerators have been working tirelessly, so how can so few have died? " Asks one resident, speaking to the RFA.

Last weekend, the newspaper 'Caixin' published the photographs of thousands of urns stacked in a room at the Hankou Funeral Home. In addition, he revealed that a funeral home received two shipments of 5,000 urns over the course of two days . "On the afternoon of March 26, a large truck stopped at the west entrance to Jingya Hall. The car was loaded with ashes from the Hankou Funeral Home. The driver said that he had installed more than 2,500 ashes in this car and that it had already been downloaded the same amount yesterday, "reads the publication accompanied by the image of the truck full of ballot boxes. Figures that question the deaths exposed by the Chinese authorities.

Taking into account that the cremations will end on April 5, coinciding with the Qingming Festival, the day of the dead, in which the graves of the deceased relatives are visited, this implies that cremations will have been carried out for at least 12 days . With this, the actual death toll in Wuhan could reach 42,000.

This mystery of the ballot box is not in itself evidence, but it certainly casts doubt on the veracity of the data released by the Chinese government. The reality is that there has already been a controversy about how to count the dead (not only in China).

Wuhan authorities have changed the way people killed by coronaviruses have been counted up to six times. This would imply, for example, that many of the deceased who already had previous pathologies were not included in the death figures for Covid-19.

"Authorities may be gradually given the actual death toll, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to terms with reality, " said one RFA resident.

Bloomberg journalists called Wuhan funeral homes for more information. In six of the eight companies, those responsible said they did not have the cremation data or were not authorized to provide it to the press. In the remaining two, the reporters were unable to contact anyone.

While in Wuhan the restrictions of a city that has lived in quarantine for two months begin to be lifted, yesterday the Chinese authorities certified a single death in the whole country by coronavirus, occurred precisely in the cradle of the pandemic.

Wuhan continues to star in the section for critically ill patients, with 493 of the 528 in the country, according to authorities.

The total number of infected diagnosed in China since the start of the pandemic is 81,518, among which 3,305 people have perished and, for the moment, 76,052 people have been discharged after successfully overcoming the disease. Thus, the number of infected "assets" remains at 2,161.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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