Like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie, New York City finds itself awash in dead bodies that just won’t go away.
Hospitals, morgues and funeral homes are filled to the brim with corpses as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and exacerbated by protocols that place limits on cemetery shifts.
As New York State Funeral Directors Association (FDA) director Mike Lanotte told the New York Post, “They’re not able to bury as many people in a day as they normally would and that’s a concern because if there’s a large number of cemeteries that start to do this, we’re going to start to have — for lack of a better word — a bottleneck. You’re going to have people’s caskets, remains, unable to be buried and that could create a backlog and a public health problem. No one wants to see pictures like in Italy of churches with caskets stacked in them. There’s also unfortunately been some funeral directors who have fallen ill from COVID, adding a little bit of extra stress to the system.”
Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, told the Post that cemeteries “have instituted safety procedures, including training cemetery workers on how to handle burials in this environment, and doing proper cleaning and disinfecting. And, they have split the workers into two teams, so that, God forbid, the members of one team get sick, the other team can continue to work. But, the burials are continuing as normal.”
The problem of what to do with corpses is a serious one, and is national in scope. In Chicago, according to the Tribune, “If a deceased person had the disease, the funeral home personnel who arrive to take the body often walk in with N95 masks. The funeral home must decide whether to permit embalming and expose the embalmer to the disease. And because Illinois is under a shelter-in-place rule, people cannot gather, at least in groups greater than 10, for a wake, visitation, funeral, shiva or memorial service.
“There will be a whole swath of the population that is going through a death and they won’t be allowed to grieve in the way they want to,” Anthony J. Lupo Jr., owner and funeral director of Cumberland Chapels in Norridge, told the newspaper. “That will have a lasting effect on a lot of people. That is going to be rough.”
Guidance for funeral firms and families planning funerals has been issued by the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Included in this guidance is this advice: “There is currently no known risk(s) associated with being in the same room at a funeral or visitation service with the body of someone who died from COVID-19. However, individuals who are close contacts of the decedent may themselves be infected with or incubating the virus, and should not attend as they may infect others. Furthermore, any person who is experiencing a fever, cough or other symptom or has any health condition which could put them at risk should not attend services or calling hours.”
