Funerals: Not The Events To Attend

"We were all in a period of adjustment and learning new things about how to cope with the coronavirus and containing its spread. It's become a mini-epicentre here."

"Everyone comes in and they're all over each other and everyone is calling out to each other and slapping each other on the back and hugging. Normally I'd shake hands and hug half the people there."

"I was very careful not to shake hands with any of the people who came, including with the family themselves. They understood. They were just grateful they were able to gather and have a funeral."

Father Paul Lundrigan, St. John’s on March 16. (CBC)

"We need to now make sure families understand this is so necessary for their protection, especially families who are grieving."

"They're so emotionally charged, they're just not thinking about keeping physical distance and washing hands and they're crying over each other. That's the quickest way to spread this disease, people who have wet noses and wet eyes and wiping their eyes and then touching each other, holding each other and kissing each other."

"It's probably one of the most dangerous places to be [at a funeral]."

Reverend Paul Lundrigan, Catholic priest, St.John's Newfoundland

There were two funerals in St.John's on March 15 and 16, at the W.J.Caul Funeral Home, overlooking the city harbour. Over 60 of the province's 82 cases of COVID-19 have been traced to the funeral home. Someone among the funeral attendees had an active, infectious case of the novel coronavirus and had attended both funerals. Someone who had returned from a trip abroad. Newfoundlanders are emotional, demonstrative people, somewhat in that regard, like Italians, where in Italy COVID-19 has devastated the country.

As a result of the fact that a lot of people are very neighbourly in Newfoundland in a way not quite seen elsewhere in the country, it seems obvious now that funerals and funeral wakes are just the places where viral transmission can very readily take place. Reverend Paul Lundrigan presided over one of the funerals and himself visited during the wakes that overlapped at the funeral home. And where he would on normal occasions take part in physical contact as a way to offer comfort at such times of grief and stress, on this particular occasion he withheld that contact.

That was in view of the fact that a health emergency had been declared. At the present time Father Lundrigan is in self-isolation. He was not among those who contracted the novel coronavirus. He has no symptoms of COVID-19, no coughing, no fever, and most certainly has not experienced any difficulty breathing. Unlike many others who attended the funerals and wakes. Where between March 15 and 17 transmission of the virus took place, at the funeral home. At the time, health regulations had limited the number of people at gatherings to 50.

Out of both services that overlapped, the theory was that among the funeral staff someone may have been a vector, but people in the community felt that someone who arrived for one funeral, knowing members of the second family's funeral stayed behind for both even though people were making an effort to avoid close contact. People would move back a row of pews if someone else sat in front of them, or they would move to the other end of a pew. But there was evidently sufficient contact to spread the virus.

And some of those who tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the funerals also spread the virus to health-care workers, including paramedics. Several days later the funeral home posted a public notice denying chatter of any problems at its facilities: "We have been in touch with the Department of Health and have been advised that no COVID-19 infection has been linked in any way to staff, family, or visitors."

The following day the health department advised the home that an individual who tested positive for COVID-19 had attended services for both funerals, which led the home to contact all involved, including musicians and pastors, including Reverend Lundrigan. The home is now closed until at least April 1. "The health of those we serve, and the greater community, is of utmost importance", the funeral home stated. 

And the Archdiocese of St.John's has stopped public funeral services altogether for the present. Should a burial be required, a brief graveside blessing is to be held in the company of a few immediate family members, only. At some future date, 'celebrations of life' ceremonies may be resumed.

A letter from Archbishop Peter Hundt on Monday to the Archdiocese of St. John's stated clergy will no longer preside over public funeral services, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (Shutterstock/GreenAppleNZ)

"It has had an impact on workers in the health-care system."

"We are following in the footsteps, in some respects, of other jurisdictions. There have been outbreak clusters around a retirement home in B.C., there was a convention of professionals in Vancouver and a bonspiel in [Edmonton] that have all generated similar concerns."

John Haggie, Newfoundland Health Minister