The administration will launch four cemetery expansion projects and open two new plots that will provide the city with 101,100 square meters of land—an area equivalent to around 14 soccer fields—for coronavirus victims.

Authorities have prepared a 3,000 sq m plot of land to expand the Bambu Apus cemetery in East Jakarta. The expansion will be able to accommodate up to 800 bodies.

The city is also preparing 12,000 sq m of additional land in Srengseng Sawah cemetery in South Jakarta as well as 5,000 sq m in Tegal Alur in West Jakarta, providing space for a further 1,900 and 800 graves, respectively.

An additional 8,100 sq m was also prepared to expand Rorotan cemetery in North Jakarta to provide space for another 1,500 bodies.

Last year, the city administration purchased two plots of open green space in Lubang Buaya and Kramat Jati in East Jakarta for new cemeteries. Both graveyards are expected to accommodate 12,900 bodies.

“The new burial sites are designated not only for people who were buried under COVID-19 protocols, but also for normal funerals to help ease the strain of existing burial grounds,” Jakarta Forestry Agency spokesperson Ivan Murcahyo said on Friday.

He added that the cemetery expansion projects were scheduled to finish in early February, while the construction of new graveyards was expected to take longer to complete.

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Jakarta, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, has been experiencing a graveyard crisis since September. The number of COVID-19 fatalities has been increasing since authorities decided to ease restrictions in the capital.

Three public cemeteries initially designated for COVID-19 victims have run out of space, including Pondok Ranggon cemetery in East Jakarta. The cemetery ran out of space for Muslims in November last year, while the burial sites for non-Muslims were fully occupied on Dec. 25.

The cemetery has been expanded several times since April, one month after the country confirmed its first COVID-19 death. In total, Pondok Ranggon has received 4,649 bodies of coronavirus victims since March.

Late last year, the Jakarta administration allowed bodies of COVID-19 victims to be buried outside dedicated graveyards to address the shortage of burial space. Many cemeteries also began implementing a double-burial policy, with COVID-19 victims buried in the same graves as deceased relatives.

But these measures were not enough to ease the burial space crisis as the number of COVID-19 deaths in the capital kept rising.

Tegal Alur cemetery had no spare land in its Muslim burial plots as of Jan. 12. Meanwhile, the remaining 5,000 sq m of land in the Srengseng Sawah cemetery were fully occupied only two weeks after it opened for COVID-19 victims.

“Currently, we can only accommodate the bodies of Muslim victims in Bambu Apus and non-Muslims in Tegal Alur,” Ivan said.

As of Saturday, Jakarta had recorded a total of 266,244 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 4,225 deaths.

However, the number of people buried under COVID-19 protocols was much higher than the number of fatalities. On average, 190 bodies are buried in cemeteries across the capital every day, more than half of which were buried under COVID-19 protocols.

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Since the pandemic hit the city in March, the Jakarta administration had held 13,482 COVID-19 burials as of Wednesday.

The administration recently tightened the COVID-19 restrictions amid overwhelmed cemeteries and hospitals in the capital. Deputy governor Ahmad Riza Patria hoped the measure would be sufficient to lower the transmission and mortality rates.

“We’re trying to prevent more residents from succumbing to COVID-19. I also hope Jakartans will be disciplined in following health protocols,” Riza said on Thursday, as quoted by kompas.com.

Nationwide, around 1.05 million COVID-19 cases had been confirmed as of Saturday, with 29,518 deaths due to the virus.