As countries deal with the pressure caused by the coronavirus outbreak, mortuaries have been overwhelmed due to the sheer number of deaths.
Authorities in Ecuador's coastal city of Guayaquil have responded by distributing cardboard boxes to cope with a shortage of coffins and many of the residents are unhappy with the response as Ecuador’s mortuaries and hospitals are struggling to meet demand.
Footage filmed on Monday shows residents waiting outside the city's cemetery to collect their cardboard coffins and give a proper burial to family members taken by coronavirus.
Ecuador has been the worst affected country in Latin America and many of those waiting to bury their loved ones complained about the government's response to the crisis, saying that cardboard is unsuitable to store dead bodies.
"They believe they do good donating those things, but they are worthless,” one resident said.
“They are worthless because they burst open. When our relatives' bodies are kept too much time in there, the cardboard coffin bursts open, they get wet.”
They weren’t the only resident upset by the makeshift coffins.
"When cardboard gets wet what happens? It gets disintegrated, doesn't it? Imagine transporting the corpse and it starts raining," complained another person residing in Guayaquil.
Nearly 2,000 pressed cardboard caskets were reportedly donated to the city.
The coffins were produced in response to locals being forced to leave bodies on the street in the hopes they would be collected by authorities.
More than 150 bodies were left lying in the streets and outside hospitals by residents.
Since Monday there have been 3,747 confirmed cases and 191 deaths.
President Lenin Moreno said the real death toll could be much higher however and confirmed authorities were collecting more than 100 bodies a day.
