The Czech newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes has reported serious problems with funeral arrangements and storage of coronavirus bodies in the cities of Ostrava in the north-east of the Czech Republic and Nitra in the west of Slovakia.
The crematorium in Ostrava, which has a population of 288,000, operates around the clock, but does not have time to cremate the dead.
The government of the Moravian-Silesian region of the Czech Republic, whose centre is Ostrava, intends to appeal to the central republican authorities to send the dead to crematoriums in other Czech cities.
COVID-19 has caused the deaths of 12,070 people in the Czech Republic, whose population is estimated at 10.71 million. On Sunday, 59 of its residents died of the effects of the coronavirus-caused disease, the national health ministry said.
Nitra, home to 76,500 people, is preparing to use a winter stadium to store the bodies of the dead, where the dead will be kept until the funeral on the ice of the hockey field.
The city is overloaded with funeral homes, which are not accepting orders for final farewell ceremonies before January 15.
So far, a mobile refrigerator has been used to store the bodies of the dead, which are also brought in from surrounding areas.
In Slovakia, the number of coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours was the highest in the epidemic period – 204. The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 reached 2,521. Meanwhile, according to Mlada fronta Dnes, another 610 residents with the virus died in the country with a population of about 5.5 million, but whose cause of death was indicated by medics as a different disease.