COVID-19 forces funeral homes to make changes to how services are conducted

Funeral services are an opportunity for friends and families to say their final goodbyes to loved ones, but because of COVID-19, funerals and visitations are being modified in keeping with state and federal guidelines aimed at controlling the coronavirus spread.

“We’re trying to take all the precautions we possibly can,” said Josh Ford of Ford & Sons Funeral Homes in Cape Girardeau.

Ford & Sons has two funeral homes in Cape Girardeau as well as facilities in Jackson, Benton, Perryville and Altenburg, along with Cape County Memorial Park and Mausoleum between Cape Girardeau and Jackson.

Ford and other funeral home operators in the region say coronavirus precautions are forcing them to adjust visitations and limit attendance at funeral services to only a handful of people so as not to exceed directives from health and government officials prohibiting gatherings of more than 10 people.

“And technically, those 10 people includes one of our funeral directors, so it’s only nine people,” Ford said, adding those who attend services are required to maintain a minimum 6 feet of “social distancing” between each other.

That can be a challenge, he said, when people at funeral homes are used to shaking hands and hugging each other.

“The last couple of services we’ve had have been private family visitations,” Ford said, explaining that in those instances, only 10 family members are allowed in at a time. “It’s been 10 in and 10 out each time.”

Kenny Pope, owner of Amick-Burnett Funeral Homes in Scott City, Chaffee, Benton and Oran, recently handled funeral and viewing arrangements for a family that had eight siblings and 32 grandchildren.

“What we allowed them to do is to bring in each individual family grouping one at a time,” Pope said. By doing so, the 10-person limit was not exceeded. On Wednesday, Amick-Burnett hosted a service for another “very large family” who began their family viewing process in small groups at 8 a.m.

Instead of limiting attendance at services and visitations, some families are choosing to postpone services until after the pandemic, when group gathering restrictions are lifted.

Graveside services offer a little more flexibility because people attending outdoor services are able to maintain sufficient distance between them in accordance with “social distancing” guidelines.

“We had a service outside under a church pavilion and were able to spread all the chairs 6 feet apart,” Pope said. “It worked out perfectly.”

At Cape County Memorial Park, people who attend graveside services are discouraged from sitting too close to one another.

“We’ve done away with chairs,” Ford said. “We still have a tent, just in case of inclement weather, but more times than not, we’ll just have everybody spread out and we’ll have the direct next-of-kin — the wife, the husband, the daughter, the son — under the tent while we do the service and everybody else is spread around.”

Typically, family members meet face-to-face with funeral directors to make service arrangements.

“But we’re taking every precaution we can,” Ford said. “Right now, we’re making arrangements over the phone and through our website. At our cemetery, if people want to pick out a grave site, they can call ahead and we’ll have somebody there, but if they want to come to the funeral home to make arrangements, it has to be in a maximum group of two people. That way, we can spread everybody out in a room.”

Both Amick-Burnett and Ford & Sons hosted small services at their facilities Wednesday for veterans that included military honors because such services are temporarily not allowed at the military cemeteries themselves in order to discourage group gatherings.

At the Missouri Veterans Cemetery in Bloomfield, burials are only taking place Wednesdays during the coronavirus outbreak.

Statewide perspective

The rules governing funeral services in Missouri during the coronavirus pandemic vary from county to county, according to Don Otto, executive director of the Missouri State Funeral Directors & Embalmers Association in Jefferson City.

“The traditional going up and hugging and shaking everybody’s hands next to the casket should be discouraged,” Otto said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

While most counties and communities are asking funeral homes to limit group gatherings, some municipalities have prohibited funerals all together until the coronavirus crisis passes.

“In Kansas City, there are no funerals going on,” Otto said. “There’s no such thing as a funeral there right now.”

He said he knows of at least one funeral home in this region, Cozean Memorial Chapel and Crematory in Farmington, Missouri, that offers “virtual” funerals through a live video stream, thereby allowing more people to be part of a funeral service by “attending” online.

Livestreaming of a funeral “can be as simple as lifting up a cellphone and putting it on Facebook or YouTube,” Otto said.

“Some people are deferring the burial of their loved ones and are having the bodies stored until such time as they can have a funeral,” he said. “As long as the body is embalmed and put in a sealed container that is permissible, but funeral homes only have a certain capacity.”

COVID-19 victims

As of Wednesday, there have been 18 deaths in Missouri attributed to COVID-19. State health officials agree that number will multiply in the coming weeks, meaning funeral homes around the state will be making service arrangements for victims of the coronavirus

Despite a rumor people who die from coronavirus must be cremated, Otto said there’s no such mandate.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “There are no states that have mandatory cremation nor should there be. The only instance I’m aware of where there was a mandate to cremate a body immediately was for Ebola.”

Otto said as long as a deceased person who had coronavirus has been properly embalmed, there is no chance of that person passing the disease to someone else.

“You’re in more danger standing next to grandma than you are being next to the body because that body isn’t breathing and it isn’t coughing,” he said.

Funeral directors and others working at funeral homes, however, run a risk of coronavirus exposure from a deceased virus victim before the embalming process if they fail to wear proper protective equipment, which Otto said is in short supply in the funeral industry.

“We’ve got a major problem with running out of personal protective equipment,” he said. “Funeral directors are supposed to be treated just like doctors, nurses and hospitals.”

While Otto said health care workers are “on the front lines,” some accommodations should be made for funeral home employees responsible for transporting and preparing the bodies of coronavirus victims.

He said it’s “easy to agree” with giving top priority to health care workers “until the bodies start stacking up because you can’t go pick them up unless you’ve got the right equipment so that is going to rapidly become a nationwide problem.”

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