Beijing/IBNS: Disturbing satellite images have emerged showing a funeral home in Beijing clearing the way for a car park as more bodies arrive for cremation revealing the true scale of China's Covid situation even as the government tried to downplay it.

The images, which were shared by Maxar Technologies, showed a grassy patch of land being cleared and paved over to make way for a new car park with expectations that there would be more rush.

By Christmas Eve, the car park of the funeral home housed more than 100 cars, with more piling up on the street and inside the facility walls.

This was a stark contrast to the quietness of the facility just a few weeks earlier.

In separate images and videos, other funeral homes were seen with lines of cars stretching across city blocks and crowds of people gathered on foot.

Many of the clips showed lines of large white vans, which are typically used as hearses.

While a surge in demand for funeral services is common over winter, the images this time show a staggering increase even compared with previous years.

Funeral homes across the country reported unmanageable demand for their services.

“I have worked here for six years and it has never been this busy,” a receptionist at the Jiangnan Funeral Home in Chongqing in southwest China told the Washington Post.

“The phone has basically not stopped ringing.”