More than 13,000 have died from COVID in Louisiana and the increase has changed business as usual for the funeral industry. Funeral Director Zondra Wright with Charbonnet Funeral Home in New Orleans says the fourth wave of COVID has made it extremely difficult for some families to plan a funeral for a loved one.
“Because they’re all in quarantine or in the hospital or some medical facility seeking treatment and wondering if they themselves will continue to live or recover,” said Wright.
Wright says business has been consistent since March of 2020 and before the pandemic they averaged nine to eleven funerals a week, she says they can easily do that many in a weekend now.
Early in the pandemic, Wright says most of their burials were nursing home patients and older adults with comorbidities
“But with the variants popping up into the community the way that they have, all that has changed,” said Wright.
And now they are burying those with COVID in their forties, fifties, and sixties.
Wright who grew up in the funeral home business says relatives often talked about the Spanish Flu pandemic and told her she too would most likely experience something similar one day. Since the spring of 2020, those in the funeral industry have remained busy and Wright fears things are not letting up anytime soon.
“Because at the rate we’re going it’s going to be a very, very, very empty Thanksgiving and an even more tragic Christmas 2021,” said Wright.
Comments