Covid victims burnt on open-air wood pyres as crematorium overloaded in Delhi

India reported a record 9,887 new coronavirus cases in one day on Saturday and overtook Italy as the world's sixth-biggest outbreak, two days before the relaxing of a lockdown with the reopening of malls, restaurants and places of worship.

With its total number of cases rising to more than 236,000, India now has fewer infections than only the United States, Brazil, Russia, Britain and Spain, according to a Reuters tally.

However, India's toll of deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is 6,642, small compared with those other countries.

Nevertheless the mounting death toll in New Delhi has meant that traditional funeral pyres have been drafted in to burn the bodies of coronavirus victims in the Indian capital as crematorium furnaces struggle to keep up.

Smoke from the open-air blazes stings the eyes of waiting mourners and workers at Nigambodh Ghat, New Delhi's biggest and oldest crematorium.

The rising number of bodies arriving from hospitals has forced the facility, situated next to the city's historic Red Fort, to extend its opening hours. Funerals start at 8.00am and go on late into the night.

Authorities have ordered victims be incinerated in modern furnaces as a precaution against infection as anxiety grows over the spread of the disease.

But only three of six furnaces at Nigambodh Ghat are working, so for the past week, wood pyres, the traditional structures used in Hindu funeral rituals for thousands of years, have been allowed to help clear the backlog.

Suman Kumar Gupta of the crematorium management committee said families arriving for a funeral had to queue to pass through a "sanitation tunnel" at the entrance and then wait hours for the ceremony, prompting anxiety about the risk of infection.

"They want it to be faster, but we have only the three furnaces working," said the official.

Pressure is being felt all around. Some ambulances are bringing four or five bodies at a time from hospitals where mortuaries are reportedly overloaded with virus victims.

In front of the furnaces, the mourners stand behind a screen, their masked faces revealing only eyes brimming with tears.

Narendra Vashisht, 68, waited two hours before he could peer through the glass at his brother's body being prepared for its final moments.

"It has not been easy," he said. "We had to keep asking them to hurry it up."

Before the virus crisis, tradition-loving Indian families were wary of modern furnaces. Now they are scared of the illness and want a quick and efficient end.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, anxious to jump-start an economy crippled by the epidemic and put millions of people back to work, is easing its lockdown of the 1.3 billion population imposed in March, which the government says helped avoid an exponential rise in cases.

Restrictions will be loosened from Monday but some experts are worried it is too soon.

Giridhar R Babu, epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, in particular questioned the re-opening of religious places.

"We can survive and sustain the gains without ... opening up religious places for sometime," Babu said on Twitter.

Concerts, sporting events and political rallies are still banned.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said late on Friday India's lockdown had helped it dampen down transmission of the disease, but there was a risk the cases could rise again.

"As India and in other large countries open up and people begin to move there is always a risk of the disease bouncing back up," Dr Mike Ryan, head of WHO's emergencies programme, told a news conference in Geneva.

People visiting places of worship will be asked to wash their hands and feet, and there will be no distribution of food offerings, sprinkling of holy water or touching of idols and holy books.