200 bodies in Hong Kong have been refrigerated, some for more than 3 years, because hearses can't cross over to mainland China: report

• About 200 bodies of people from mainland China have been refrigerated in storage in Hong Kong.
• Some of these bodies have been there for close to three years, the SCMP reported.

At least 200 bodies have been refrigerated in mortuaries in Hong Kong for months on end — some for more than three years.

This is because China's stringent COVID-19 border restrictions have prevented families in Hong Kong from fulfilling their deceased loved ones' last requests — to be buried in mainland China, per a report from the South China Morning Post on Sunday.

Hearses from Hong Kong were banned from entering China in late January 2022, as Hong Kong wrestled with its fifth wave of Covid-19 infections, the SCMP reported. But even before these restrictions were put in place, only two to three hearses were allowed to cross over daily, which created a backlog, the chairman of the Funeral Business Association in Hong Kong told the SCMP.

"Some families gave up waiting and chose to cremate the dead in Hong Kong," the chairman, Kwok Hoi-pong, told the SCMP. "Some bodies have been kept at the coffin home for three years."

Bodies are kept refrigerated in mortuaries to keep them from decomposing.

Several mortuaries in Hong Kong are entirely full. The Tung Wah Group of Hospitals told the SCMP that it had 185 coffins in storage, and there were 19 on a waiting list.

While it was announced by Hong Kong authorities that hearses would be allowed to cross over to China from February 6, funeral operators told the SCMP that mainland authorities were still not permitting their passage through the Sha Tau Kok land checkpoint.

Another option for families is to fly the bodies over via plane, but it would cost about $25,000 and the bodies would need to be thoroughly embalmed, per the SCMP.

Embalming is the process of preserving a body via chemicals to keep it from decomposing naturally. But families of deceased people in storage said that they would not want this alternative, saying that it is unnatural.

"They wished to return to nature, not be preserved by chemicals," Dee Chan, a Hong Kong resident who works in the logistics industry, told the SCMP.

Chan's mother, 89, died of pneumonia in late January, and his father passed away in March after choking on food. But Chan's been forced to keep them refrigerated in storage for now, the SCMP reported.

This is because Chan's parents paid over $76,000 for burial plots in Shenzhen, China, where they were born. But Chan was not able to bring their bodies over to the mainland for their last rites.

"Whenever I think of my parents being kept in refrigeration at the mortuaries, I feel extremely sad and desperate," Chan, 48, told the SCMP.

Representatives for the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., and funeral homes like the Funeral Business Association in Hong Kong, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital mortuary, and the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.