Family takes woman's body on bike for cremation as no ambulance found

SRIKAKULAM: Unable to find an ambulance as hospitals remain overwhelmed under the rising number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, a family was forced to carry a woman's body on a bike to the cremation ground in Andhra Pradesh's Srikakulam.

The 50-year-old woman had Covid-19 symptoms for a while and she had been waiting for her test results. However, the woman died before her diagnostic report.

The woman, a native of Mandasa Mandal village in Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh, was taken to a hospital on Monday. She died after her condition deteriorated.

Hoping to arrange an ambulance or any other vehicle, the family kept waiting with the body before ferrying it to the cremation ground on a bike. As they couldn't find an ambulance, the woman's son and son-in-law took her body to their village for cremation on a bike.

Last year as the Covid-19 cases were surging in the first wave of the pandemic, the Andhra Pradesh government had flagged a huge fleet of 1088 ambulances and 104 mobile medical units.