The cold hits you first. Then comes the smell.
Inside a refrigerated shipping container are 17 plastic-wrapped corpses, each bearing a yellow label reading "highly contagious."
The 12-meter steel box has been installed at the Johannesburg morgue to help it cope with a rising tide of Covid deaths.
The container can store up to 40 corpses, keeping them at a constant zero degrees Celsius.
"We have seen an increase of around 40 percent (in corpses) across the country," said spokesman Marius du Plessis of AVBOB, a leading funeral and burial service provider in the country.
South Africa is the continent's worst-hit country in the pandemic, with more than 1.4 million coronavirus cases and 40,800 deaths.
It was already struggling to beat back infections when they surged to unprecedented levels this month after scientists detected a new virus variant widely believed to be more contagious.
To help store the influx of bodies -- and ensure Covid-19 victims are separated from others -- AVBOB has distributed 22 containers normally used for transporting goods to its 250 South African morgues.
Quick turnover
At a funeral home in the administrative capital Pretoria, an undertaker ties a third layer of plastic around a corpse sent that morning from a coronavirus hospital ward.
Only the feet, arms and head can be distinguished from the tightly wrapped bundle lying on a stainless steel table, surrounded by white-tiled walls.
The body must be buried soon.
"Covid bodies can be kept for seven days maximum," facility manager Naomi Van der Heever said.