Markets reopened and some children attended school in the shattered port city of Padang on Monday, but no hope remained for some inland villages which would be left as mass graves, Reuters reported.
Relief workers said there was little chance of finding anyone else alive in the ruins five days after a 7.6 magnitude quake hit the Indonesia island of Sumatra.
An official said three hamlets on the foothills of the Gunung Tigo mountain wiped out by landslides would be turned into mass graves.
"Instead of the extra cost of evacuating the corpses, it's better to allocate the money for the living," Ade Edward, the head of the West Sumatra earthquake coordinating desk was quoted by Kompas newspaper as saying.
While aid and international rescue teams have poured into Padang, a city of 900,000, help has been slow to reach remoter inland areas, with landslides cutting many roads.
When rescuers arrived they found entire villages obliterated by landslides and homeless survivors desperate for food, water and shelter.
"I am the only one left," said Zulfahmi, 39, who was in the village of Kapalo Koto, near Pariaman, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Padang, with 36 family members when the quake struck.
"My child, my wife, my mother-in-law, they are all gone. They are under the earth now."
Health officials said five villages had been buried in torrents of mud and rock torn out of the lush green hills by the force of the quake.
"In the villages in Pariaman, we estimate about 600 people died," said Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry's crisis centre. Pariaman, closer to the epicentre, is one of the worst-affected areas.
"In one of the villages, there's a 20-metre-high minaret, it was completely buried, there's nothing left, so I presume the whole village is buried by a 30-metre deep landslide."
Some schools reopen in quake-hit Indonesia city
