A grim report from Spain says that coronavirus has hit the European country so hard that local officials have begun to use a public ice rink in Madrid to house the corpses that are piling up.

Spain has the third-highest number of coronavirus deaths, just behind China and Italy, and the fourth-highest number of confirmed cases.

The deaths have struck so quickly that city services are overwhelmed and officials are turning to the Palacio de Hielo, or Ice Palace, for a makeshift mortuary.

Funeral workers are working around the clock to collect the dead, but they are understaffed and don't have the proper protective gear.

A statement from the regional government said the bizarre act of last resort was made to "lessen the pain of the families of the victims and the situation that's being recorded in Madrid's hospitals."

Spain has been in a lockdown and a state of emergency.

Another report said that many Spaniards infected with the virus are left to fend for themselves and often die alone in their apartments.

Spanish army troops are reportedly finding elderly residents of nursery homes living among the corpses of others that have died from the virus.

Hospitals are also overwhelmed and are turning away the elderly with the coronavirus from nursery homes.

"With everything that is happening with the coronavirus, this was a ticking bomb," said a Spanish woman whose mother lived at a nursery home where some dead were abandoned.

Here's more about coronavirus in Spain: