Davao City-run crematorium offers free services for virus deaths

DAVAO CITY—The city government’s newly built crematorium is offering free services to families whose relatives died of COVID-19.

According to Mayor Sara Duterte, the P14.8-million facility is part of the local government’s response to the pandemic and complies with the government’s health and safety guidelines.

“We can only accommodate bodies of those who died of COVID-19 for now, but once the pandemic is over, we can already accommodate all kinds of bodies referred to us for cremation,” Duterte said.

Guidelines issued by the Department of the Interior and Local Government and recommendations by epidemiologists and infectious diseases specialists require bodies of COVID-19 patients to be buried or cremated 12 hours after the declaration of death.

The city government built the crematorium at Wireless Cemetery. It seeks to ease the load of cremation referrals to other facilities, according to a statement from the city information office.

Continuous operation

Funds for the project came from the city’s public service enhancement program and partly from the Bayanihan 1 grant from the national government.

Duterte said the crematorium, which started operating on Feb. 4, could only accept and process four cadavers a day.

“If our crematorium cannot handle the bulk of referrals for cadaver cremation, then we will still utilize private crematoriums. To ensure that there will always be a crematorium operating in the city, we will operate on the days when private crematoriums are closed,” she said.

As of Feb. 7, the Department of Health reported 1,399 active COVID-19 cases in Davao City, which had monitored a total of 10,999 recoveries and 573 deaths since the pandemic was declared in March last year.—GERMELINA LACORTE INQ