An­na-Lisa Paul

With T&T’s COVID-19 deaths hav­ing crossed clos­ing in on 900 (879 as of yes­ter­day) and In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) oc­cu­pan­cy rates hov­er­ing around 98 per cent, the easy avail­abil­i­ty of bur­ial plots and ready ac­cess to a cre­ma­to­ri­um has been vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ed.

In some in­stances, this chal­lenge has now led to hun­dreds of fam­i­lies hav­ing to wait for weeks be­fore the bod­ies of their loved ones are dis­posed off.

In one case, a fam­i­ly whose beloved aunt died from the virus on June 1, had to set­tle for a vir­tu­al fu­ner­al ser­vice be­ing held on June 14; and were forced to wait an­oth­er week be­fore the bur­ial could be done on June 21—due to the lack of an avail­able spot in one of a hand­ful of ap­proved ceme­ter­ies that are al­low­ing such bod­ies to be buried with­in.

This, de­spite the edict stip­u­lat­ed by the Min­istry of Health (MOH) in “The New Nor­mal: Rec­om­men­da­tions and Guide­lines for Hos­pi­tal Staff and Fu­ner­al Agen­cies in the Con­text of COVID-19” which states, “In ac­cor­dance with Chap­ter 12 No 4, there should be speedy bur­ial/cre­ma­tion of the de­ceased. The bur­ial/cre­ma­tion should oc­cur with­in 24-48 hours of the body ar­riv­ing at the fu­ner­al home.”

MOH doc­u­ment guides fu­ner­al agen­cies

Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fu­ner­al Pro­fes­sion­als of T&T (AF­PTT), Kei­th Bel­grove said the doc­u­ment which was pub­lished in May 2021 by the MOH, is what now guides all fu­ner­al homes in T&T.

Apart from hav­ing ad­e­quate man­pow­er; re­frig­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ties; the nec­es­sary ve­hi­cles; and Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE); Bel­grove said fu­ner­al homes ap­proved to han­dle COVID-19 de­ceased must meet the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria which in­clude a full-time em­balmer in its’ em­ploy; and the em­balmer(s) must pos­sess qual­i­fi­ca­tions from ac­cred­it­ed schools in the USA, Cana­da, or the UK.

The AF­PTT head told the Sun­day Guardian, “We un­der­stood from day one that we had to man­age the COVID-19 death sce­nario be­cause even now, we don’t ful­ly un­der­stand the pathol­o­gy of the virus at the point of death.”

Ad­mit­ting that not enough re­search has as yet been done in this area due to the con­tin­u­ing sever­i­ty of the pan­dem­ic, he went on, “As such, ab­solute pre­cau­tion is re­quired when we are han­dling such deaths.”

Bel­grove said even though all fu­ner­al homes were will­ing to han­dle the bod­ies of such de­ceased, the AF­PTT and the MOH both, “recog­nised the need to lim­it it.”

COVID-19 buri­als re­strict­ed to hand­ful of ceme­ter­ies

It is this think­ing that has been guid­ing each Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (RHA) as they must con­form to these guide­lines.

The list of fu­ner­al homes au­tho­rised to han­dle COVID-19 deaths which was last up­dat­ed on June 23 by the AF­PTT, fea­tured 31 agen­cies who have so far been grant­ed ap­proval.

Bel­grove stressed, “The RHA’s can­not au­tho­rise a fu­ner­al home that is not on the list, to pick up and store per­sons who have died from COVID-19 re­lat­ed caus­es.”

Re­veal­ing the strict han­dling pro­ce­dures gov­ern­ing their op­er­a­tions up­on re­ceipt of a COVID-19 de­ceased, he said, “We are not au­tho­rised to open the en­case­ment in which we re­ceive them. We are to place it in­to re­frig­er­a­tion for safe-keep­ing, and when the fu­ner­al, whether it is bur­ial or cre­ma­tion is avail­able, we place the per­son in­to the cof­fin or cas­ket and con­duct a ser­vice with five per­sons present, not more than half an hour, and those five in­clude the re­li­gious min­is­ter.”

Bel­grove added, “If we are bury­ing, the grave-dig­gers are to be in PPE, or the fu­ner­al home staff in full PPE if we are cre­mat­ing.”

Chal­lenged to find avail­able bur­ial plots at ap­proved ceme­ter­ies across the coun­try au­tho­rised to han­dle COVID-19 bod­ies, he said this de­ci­sion was tak­en, “with good rea­son again be­cause we still do not un­der­stand the or­gan­ism and we want to be sure the bur­ial will not be in a ceme­tery with a high wa­ter ta­ble where you can run a risk of im­pact­ing the wa­ter ta­ble of the coun­try.”

As such, “on­ly par­tic­u­lar ceme­ter­ies were ap­proved.”

They in­clude the Cara­po Pub­lic Ceme­tery; the Cu­nar­ipo Pub­lic Ceme­tery; the Mara­bel­la Pub­lic Ceme­tery; the Wa­ter­loo Ceme­tery; and the Point Fortin Pub­lic Ceme­tery.

Mean­while, COVID-19 buri­als are sched­uled at all the ceme­ter­ies. At the Cara­po Pub­lic Ceme­tery, it is lim­it­ed to four per day, every Mon­day, Wednes­day and Fri­day.

Even though this move is adding to a back­log of bod­ies cur­rent­ly await­ing dis­pos­al, Bel­grove said this al­lows room for both buri­als and cre­ma­tions to be done by the re­spec­tive fu­ner­al home.

Re­gard­ing cre­ma­tions, he said, “Fu­ner­al homes are not al­lowed to cre­mate a per­son who has died of COVID-19, at tra­di­tion­al cre­ma­tion sites, large­ly be­cause of the crowds that gath­er there.”

Util­is­ing cre­ma­to­ri­ums in Port-of-Spain, Trinci­ty, Ari­ma, San­gre Grande and San Fer­nan­do, the AF­PTT head went on, “These all op­er­ate at four to five ca­pac­i­ty per day.”

And with dai­ly deaths rang­ing be­tween five and 20 per day in the last week, it will not be easy for a griev­ing fam­i­ly to cal­cu­late when and how long it will take be­fore their loved one is laid to rest.

Em­balmers risk­ing lives; can be de-list­ed

Al­though they are not au­tho­rised to sani­tise, dress and present the bod­ies of the de­ceased un­der the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions, Bel­grove said many fu­ner­al homes are en­gaged in this dan­ger­ous prac­tice.

He claimed, “They are do­ing this at great risk to them­selves and the com­mu­ni­ty, and we have ad­vised them that if you are au­tho­rised and do­ing such things, you could be de-list­ed and tak­en off the list of au­tho­rized fu­ner­al homes.”

To the pub­lic, he in­di­cat­ed, “The fu­ner­al home is not au­tho­rised to open the bag and they are not au­tho­rised to dress.”

Bel­grove said pri­or to the body be­ing col­lect­ed from the hos­pi­tal, a view­ing can be arranged and if this was not done, “The fu­ner­al home may open the bag to show on­ly the face so the fam­i­ly mem­ber can prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy and sat­is­fy them­selves that yes, this is the cor­rect per­son.”

Fam­i­lies be­ing charged by fu­ner­al homes to store bod­ies

De­scrib­ing the cost of stor­ing the body as a nor­mal fu­ner­al cost a fam­i­ly would usu­al­ly in­cur, Bel­grove said, “With the high vol­ume we have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, some fu­ner­al homes have been charg­ing the fam­i­lies for the trans­porta­tion and re­frig­er­a­tion from the med­ical in­sti­tu­tion as well.”

These rates are said to vary from agency to agency.

But Bel­grove point­ed out, “Most fu­ner­al homes have a re­duced charge for ad­di­tion­al re­frig­er­a­tion over the pe­ri­od of time which they will ap­ply, be­cause the de­lay is not re­al­ly the fam­i­ly’s fault, but rather, due to the cir­cum­stances we find our­selves in, in this COVID en­vi­ron­ment.”

Briefly com­ment­ing on bod­ies be­ing trans­port­ed via sea­far­ing ves­sels, he said mar­itime law was clear that a de­ceased must be em­balmed and placed in an ap­pro­pri­ate con­tain­er.

“Be­cause we are not al­lowed to open or sani­tise a de­ceased COVID-19 body in any way, it means you can­not em­balm them and as such, per­sons can­not be trans­ferred be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go on any sea­far­ing ves­sel, so bod­ies of per­sons from To­ba­go who passed in Trinidad…their ser­vice will have to be com­plet­ed in Trinidad and vice ver­sa for To­ba­go.”