Funeral home staff overwhelmed by waves of COVID-19 deaths
By Khristopher J. Brooks
COVID-19's impact on funeral homes
Dutch Nie, who runs a small funeral home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, recounts the flood of calls from grieving families as the first wave of COVID-19 hit the U.S. last year. "In March and April, we saw a rise in the number of deaths right off the bat. Those were 18- and 20-hour days. It was difficult to turn off your brain."
Since then, the startling death toll from the coronavirus has put an even greater strain on many funeral homes across the U.S., with the daily number of fatalities topping 4,000 per day in January. Roughly 390,000 Americans have died in total, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now projects up to 90,000 more deaths in the next three weeks alone.