Mass Cremations For Covid Victims As Delhi Faces Deluge Of Virus Deaths

People losing loved ones in Delhi, where 306 people have died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, are turning to makeshift facilities that are undertaking mass burials and cremations as crematoriums come under pressure.

Delhi resident Nitish Kumar was forced to keep his dead mother's body at home for nearly two days while he searched for space in the city's crematoriums - a sign of the deluge of death in the capital where coronavirus cases are surging. On Thursday, Mr Kumar cremated his mother, who died of COVID-19, in a makeshift, mass cremation facility in a parking lot adjoining a crematorium in Seemapuri in northeast Delhi. "I ran pillar to post but every crematorium had some reason ... one said it had run out of wood," said Mr Kumar, wearing a mask and squinting his eyes that were stinging from the smoke blowing from the burning pyres. India recorded the world's highest daily tally of 3,14,835 coronavirus infections on Thursday, with the second wave of the pandemic crushing the country's health infrastructure. In Delhi alone, where hospitals are running out of medical oxygen supplies, the daily rise was over 26,000.