An online memorial dedicated to the memory of those who died of Covid-19 was launched on Saturday, creating a space where a kin of the deceased can write a tribute for the departed.

The website, www.nationalcovidmemorial.in, began with tributes to 31 people.

The creators of the National Covid Memorial urged the kin of those who died to send tributes for their loved ones. In India, 1,54,147 people died from Covid-19 India till 6pm on January 30, 2021, according to the website of the Union ministry of health and family welfare.

The tribute, within 200 words, and photograph will be published on the site. The idea to build the online memorial came to its creators after seeing the helplessness of the families of the deceased who could neither visit the hospital during the person’s illness nor could go for the funeral in the first months of the pandemic. Things changed from mid-September, when the state government started handing bodies to the family.

The memorial would be a “virtual epitaph” for the dead, said a member of the team that created the website.

Abhijit Chowdhury, a public health specialist and a brain behind the memorial, said it added that the memorial would document for posterity the cost of the pandemic. “We need to preserve for posterity what enormous suffering humankind had to go through because of the pandemic,” said Chowdhury, also a volunteer of Covid Care Network (CCN), an organisation comprising health officials, doctors and those who have recovered from Covid. CCN is also involved in creating the memorial.

Partha Mukherjee, of the network, said the online memorial would also provide stories and clues to public health planners in future about how the entire world, was caught unprepared.

Ushasie Chakraborty, daughter of veteran CPM leader Shyamal Chakra-borty, told Metro that the pain of not being able to go on the last journey of someone could go on to haunt family members for many days. “It was kind of disrespecting the dead,” she said. The veteran leader passed away on August 6.

In May 2020, The New York Times in its front page carried the names of 1,000 people who died from Covid-19 in the US, as the country approached nearly 1 lakh deaths till then.

Relatives can email their tributes to nationalcovidmemorial@gmail.com or WhatsApp 9886002630. They can also visit the website and click on the ‘submit memorial’ menu. “We are asking for a death certificate and a photo,” said Chowdhury.

Amik Mukhopadhyay, a Beleghata resident, has written a tribute in memory of his brother, who died on November 6. “I wrote to pay my respect to my brother, so that he lives among his known and even those who did not know him.” He also lost his 83-year-old mother to Covid on November 11.

“I have also written a tribute for my mother,” he said.

Among those who had written tributes about their loved ones was Bratati Bhattacharya, wife of Pradip Bhattacharya, who was a doctor in North 24-Parganas’ Shyamnagar. He was so loved that the local people contributed money to pay a portion of the bill of the doctor’s treatment.