Tunisian hospitals are battling to keep operating as the number of people dying of Covid-19 spikes and bodies are left in rooms because mortuaries are running at full capacity.

“Some patients have died without us realising it,” said Imen Fteiti a nurse at the Ibn Jazzar hospital in the central city of Kairouan, one of the hardest hit by the pandemic.

Some bodies of Covid victims have been left lying in rooms, next to other patients, for up to 24 hours because there were not enough staff to organise their transfer to overstretched mortuaries, Reuters reports.

Tunisia has officially recorded more than 15,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic last year with the toll rising in recent weeks. More than 600 Covid patients are in intensive care units around the country, and authorities have set up field hospitals to cope with a crisis they have compared to a “tsunami”.