Chinese funeral home forced to give 'disrespectful' Covid tests to dead people

China's attempts to remove all traces of Covid from the country have now taken a strange twist.A new edict from officials has been given to funeral homes, and it demands that they test the dead for the virus which is still ravaging the country.The government-backed Shenzhen Funeral Home was given the order last week, after case numbers in the city continued to be reported.Across the entire country, new cases discovered were reported to be 6,392 yesterday (May 28), with around 64,488 active cases across the entire country.Since the pandemic began, China has had more than 1.2 million cases – but only 5,226 deaths.This hasn't stopped the Chinese government from pushing ahead with its “zero Covid” policy, which is something Labour's Richard Burgon pushed for in the UK throughout the pandemic.And now a funeral home in Shenzhen has been told to test the dead for Covid.The hope is, is that anyone who tests positive will be isolated so that mourners won't catch Covid at open-casket funerals.The edict was shown to website Sixth Tone, who said: “An operator at Shenzhen’s city service hotline said they were unable to locate official documents and policies requiring a nucleic acid test of the deceased.“Shenzhen has made negative results from the past 72 hours mandatory to access public transport and crowded spaces since early April.“Such requirements sometimes resulted in tragedies for those in urgent need of medical treatment during the lockdown in other cities.”The testing of the dead policy was slammed by some online locally as “ethically and emotionally unacceptable”, while being criticised for showing “little respect to the dead”.One user on Chinese social media site Weibo wrote: “I’m not sure if I would have to wear a mask for.