Sao Paulo: Ahead of an anticipated and dreaded peak of the national COVID-19 epidemic, Brazil has begun digging large-scale graveyards.

In Sao Paulo's Vila Formosa cemetery, the largest in Latin America, about 20 excavators are digging against the clock.

An aerial view of Vila Formosa cemetery as excavators open extra graves amid the coronavirus pandemic. Credit:Getty Images

In the space of a few days, the scene of workers digging painstakingly with shovels has changed to that of operators in masks and white overalls at the controls of heavy machinery.

The calm and silence of the Vila Formosa cemetery, where the remains of 1.5 million people are estimated to rest, is broken by the noise of the hydraulic excavators that on Friday started to dig around 1200 new graves.