Volunteer undertakers bear the dead from Indonesian homes as COVID-19 deaths rise

Donning white protective suits, Ardi and another crew member picked up her embalmed body, placed it in a coffin and prayed over it before driving to the cemetery for a burial.

Sadly, the sudden death of Novi's mother is typical of what Ardi's team is seeing at the moment.

Lapor COVID-19, a domestic group that collects pandemic data from the community, said that since June 557 people, mainly in Java, have died of COVID-19 outside of hospitals, the majority of them in self-isolation.

Read Also: Indonesia reports record COVID-19 cases, orders oxygen supplies

Rino Indira, the coordinator of the volunteer undertakers in Bogor, said a 24-hour hotline had been set up and the team was helping to plug a hole in the city's strained healthcare system.

"This is an emergency situation in Bogor," said Rino, who is also part of the local government's COVID-19 task force, adding that his team is picking up about seven to nine bodies a day.

Indonesia, which is the world's fourth most populous country with more than 270 million people, has in the past week seen coronavirus cases jump roughly sevenfold from a month ago to as high as 47,000, with the death toll also doubling from early July.