(Bloomberg) -- Police and security guards were stationed outside a Beijing crematorium reportedly designated to handle Covid fatalities, as questions over China’s virus death toll mount. 

Guards pushed journalists to the back of the Beijing Dongjiao Funeral Parlor’s parking lot on Monday, as a line of about a dozen black minivans entered the site on Beijing’s eastern outskirts, used to prepare and process bodies for cremation. The vans appeared to be dropping off bodies and were surrounded at one point by what seemed to be mourners or relatives. 

The crematorium has drawn scrutiny after workers told foreign media including the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal that they were overwhelmed with bodies since China scrapped most Covid restrictions and Beijing experienced a surge in cases. That contrasts with the official virus death count, which saw just two Covid fatalities recorded for Beijing this weekend, the first in almost a month. 

Read more: China Reports Two Covid Deaths, But Numbers Don’t Stack Up

Photographs taken earlier on Monday showed rows of cars — some adorned with ribbons often used in China to signify a vehicle is part of a funeral procession — entering Dongjiao, and employees in full PPE moving a coffin. 

The crematorium has been designated to handle Covid-positive cases and has been working around the clock, with about 200 bodies arriving daily, from 30 to 40 on a typical day, an employee told the Journal on Friday. Meanwhile, staff told the FT that the bodies of at least 30 Covid victims were cremated on Wednesday, when no fatalities were recorded for all of China, let alone Beijing. 

The disparity comes as China embarks on a complete pivot away from its stringent Covid Zero policy, which has been dragging on the economy all year and stoking popular unrest. After painting Covid as a lethal threat the population needed to be protected from for most of the pandemic, officials are now saying it’s not dangerous, with one top adviser saying omicron could be likened to a “cold.”

The inevitable rise in deaths that comes from reopening doesn’t fit with that messaging, especially with some experts predicting almost 1 million fatalities from this coming wave alone. 

Other countries that made a similar shift from containing Covid to living with it, like Singapore and New Zealand, saw much bigger increases in deaths when they reopened, and they had higher vaccination rates, especially among the elderly. China’s booster rate for those over 80 is just 40%. 

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.