As the covid-19 pandemic changes the way we live and interact, funerals are changing too. Funeral directors have rapidly responded to calls for social distancing by offering new solutions for funeral services, including livestreaming, recordings, and outdoor funerals with a six-foot buffer between attendees. These new solutions have attracted notice and made headlines around the world. Here’s what newspapers and other news sources are saying about funerals in the age of covid-19.
This page will be updated regularly. Last update: August 17, 2020.
Local news
California
- San Francisco Chronicle: The coronavirus means no large funerals, but online services and more remains to store
- Los Angeles Times: How can you grieve without a funeral? As coronavirus restrictions become more strict, families make heartbreaking choices
- NBC Los Angeles: Funerals are ‘not essential,’ and it’s prolonging heartache during the pandemic
Florida
- Daily Beast: Burials at sea are booming during the pandemic
Illinois
- Chicago Tribune: Chicago funeral homes are doing their best to offer services to grieving families among coronavirus mandates
- WGN: Live streams of funeral services help people grieve during the pandemic
Kansas
- Wichita Eagle: Coronavirus could change funerals, how we handle death
Kentucky
- Louisville Courier-Journal: How Louisville funeral homes are reacting to coronavirus guidelines on gatherings
Louisiana
- NOLA.com: Community activist’s funeral shows how mourning has changed in New Orleans due to coronavirus
Maryland
- Baltimore Sun: ‘It wasn’t worth it’: Coronavirus concerns postpone weddings, funeral services in Baltimore area
Missouri
- Kansas City Star: On eve of COVID-19 funeral ban, 10 bid goodbye to KC father. It should’ve been 1,000
New Hampshire
- New Hampshire Union Leader: End-of-life rituals: Pandemic impedes on funerals, hospice care
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
New York
- New York Times: A good death is a rite of Irish life. Amid coronavirus, that looks different.
- WETM 18: Funeral homes learn and adapt during pandemic
- Syracuse.com: Coronavirus: Wakes and funeral services are now affected in NY
North Carolina
- Charlotte News-Observer: NC funeral homes cope with coronavirus restrictions by delaying or streaming services
Pennsylvania
- Philadelphia Inquirer: In the wake of coronavirus, families and funeral homes are livestreaming services
- Courier Express: DuBois funeral homes convert to small gatherings, online streaming
Tennessee
Texas
- San Antonio Express News: ‘Last responders’ also feel stress of coronavirus pandemic in San Antonio
- CBS 19: Final goodbyes: COVID-19’s effect on funerals and how we honor the dead
- Houston Chronicle: Coronavirus affecting Houston area funeral homes’ practices
- ABC 13: How the pandemic is impacting this East End funeral home
Utah
- Deseret News: No time to grieve: How the coronavirus crisis changed mourning
- Salt Lake Tribune: Utah funeral homes find ways to help people grieve despite limitations from coronavirus
Virginia
- Progress-Index: COVID-19 pandemic restrictions lifted at national cemeteries
Washington, D.C.
- Washington Post: Grief amid the pandemic: Live-streamed funerals, canceled services and mourning left ‘unfinished’
Wisconsin
- Fond du Lac Reporter: Losing loved ones during a pandemic: families, funeral homes cope when nothing is normal
- Beloit Daily News: Funerals move online or outdoors
National news
- USA Today: Funerals, grieving death faces changes during the coronavirus outbreak
- NPR: Funeral homes change their practices in response to coronavirus
- Newsweek: CDC urges mourners to livestream funerals to avoid spread of coronavirus
- Fortune: Funerals in the time of coronavirus: How a pandemic is changing the industry
- Salon: Facing coronavirus at the funeral home: Families forces to ponder death due to COVID-19
- TMZ: Funerals scale back & get digital
- MarketWatch: How do you plan a funeral in the middle of the coronavirus crisis?
- Mother Jones: Virtual memorials and no hugs: The funeral industry prepares for coronavirus
- Vice: How funeral directors are preparing for coronavirus
International news
- Council on Foreign Relations: How the world has learned to grieve in a pandemic
- The Guardian: UK funeral directors may stream burials of coronavirus victims
- BBC: Coronavirus: US funerals move to live-streaming
- CTV News: COVID-19: Montreal funeral services postponed, moved online
- New Zealand Herald: Funerals to be increasingly live-streamed due to coronavirus
