What it's like to be a 'deathcare' worker collecting bodies during the coronavirus pandemic

• In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, those that have lost a love one face social distancing and funeral restrictions in addition to grieving their loss.
• And for NYC's deathcare workers, guiding these grieving families gets harder and harder every day.
• With an ever-increasing death toll in NYC, deathcare workers are running out of manpower, Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs), and space for the bodies of the deceased. Yet, they're still working, putting themselves at risk for contracting the virus.
• Business Insider's Dave Mosher followed funeral director Pat Marmo for a day to see what it's like on the ground for deathcare workers battling COVID-19.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcription of the video:

Narrator: When a loved one dies, we want to celebrate their life. But this pandemic has impacted even how we mourn. And as New York City becomes the US's epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, "deathcare" workers are struggling to keep up.

Dave Mosher: The funeral directors, the funeral homes, the embalmers, everyone is around these bodies, they are putting themselves at risk.

Narrator: That's Dave.

Mosher: My name is Dave Mosher, and I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider. I just left International Funeral Service of New York, which is located in Brooklyn, and they are handling probably the most COVID-19 deaths that are coming out of this pandemic.

Narrator: Dave followed deathcare workers for a day to see what their job is really like during the coronavirus outbreak.

Mosher: I wore a lot of personal protective equipment, or PPE, like a face mask, surgical gloves, and I also washed my hands and did other things to minimize my risk while reporting this assignment.

Narrator: He shadowed Pat Marmo, a funeral director and owner of six funeral homes in Brooklyn. Before COVID-19, Pat typically had 40 open cases on his roster.

Mosher: When I went to visit, the company has 61 bodies on its roster, and 15 of those were COVID-19 bodies.

Narrator: But by April 6, his roster had 300 cases.

Pat Marmo: No funeral home has the infrastructure to handle such volume. None. They only have so many people themselves. They only have so many transport vehicles. Phone's ringing night and day. We're all overwhelmed.

Narrator: The problem is not just the number of deaths. The transfer of bodies has slowed down, too.

Mosher: In order for the body to be cremated or buried, the medical examiner's office has to clear the cause of death on the death certificate.

Marmo: So now what's happening is doctors that don't have confirmed case of COVID, they're putting pneumonia. So now they're [the medical examiner] not accepting this cause of death, so we have to wait to get the right cause of death that would be cleared for cremation.

Narrator: It's taking up to three days to get a death certificate fixed.

Marmo: The other problem we're having is we're not getting death certificates online quick enough. The doctors are overwhelmed. So the person's in the hospital for an extra day or so because the death certificate's not signed.

Narrator: During that time, the body has to be held somewhere. That delay, along with the rising death toll in New York City, has led to overcrowded hospital morgues. In New York City, a person dies from COVID-19 every 10 minutes, and that rate is expected to keep growing. To keep up, hospitals and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner have built makeshift morgues, white tents and refrigerated tractor trailers set up outside of New York City's hospitals.

To remove a decedent from a New York City morgue, whether that body is carrying COVID-19 or not, a family member calls Pat for funeral arrangements. Once a death certificate is finalized, Pat and his team move the body from the morgue to its final resting place.

Mosher: It was really incredible to see these people at work, putting themselves at risk during a pandemic to gather the bodies of loved ones, reunite them with their families, so that those families can mourn the loss of that person.

Narrator: And for funeral directors like Pat, the battle is risky. They face longer and longer hours, an ever-increasing number of pickups, and the chance of getting sick themselves. While the odds are low, coronavirus can be spread from a person's body after they've died, so deathcare workers have to be extra cautious.

Mosher: Before going out on a call to pick up a body, Pat and his assistant will load up all the disinfectant spray and everything they need, including putting on lots of PPE to protect themselves. I went on a ride along with Pat's team to pick up a COVID-19 body that had been called in that morning. While we were getting that body, two more COVID-19 bodies were called in from the same hospital.

Marmo: It's just extra work that we have to do, we have to cover.

Mosher: Once we arrived at the hospital, we all got a temperature check at the entrance to make sure that we didn't have a fever. We all put on our face masks and gloves, and Pat's assistant also put on a gown and a face shield because he was gonna be working closest to the body. They go to the morgue and locate the body and spray down the bag with disinfectant spray, especially the zipper. And then they open the bag to verify the person's identity.

Marmo: I took a piece of cotton, and I put some more of this chemical on it, and I covered the mouth. This way, when I transported him, whatever he had in his lungs doesn't come out.

Narrator: Pat and his team then carefully load the gurney into the van and drive back to the funeral home, where the decedent is lowered downstairs to be embalmed.

Marmo: Well at first, I'm like, nobody's gonna embalm these cases. I'll do them. But they came on so strong that there's no way I could do it. I have some really good people that work for me. They came to me and says, "Listen, Pat, I'm willing to do them. We're willing to help you."

Narrator: Embalming is part of preparing the body for a funeral, and funeral services look different during the coronavirus crisis.

Mosher: People are still trying to hold funerals. What funeral directors are recommending is to FaceTime into a funeral so that they can be present while mourning the loss of this loved one. But it's a heartbreaking thing to see ancillary relatives try to hold the service, they're all standing six feet apart, there can't be any more than 10 of them. It just doesn't seem like a proper way to honor your loved ones, but in some cases, these families don't have any choice.

Narrator: After the funeral service, Pat and his team use the same PPE precautions to transport the body to the crematorium.

Mosher: Cremation is the quickest and most common funeral service these days, but even it is becoming a logistical nightmare during this pandemic.

Marmo: These crematories can't handle the volume either. So they're giving you an appointment. We have to call them ahead of time, and they'll give me a schedule, when to bring certain people.

Narrator: And the number of cases just keeps rising.

Marmo: I'm hoping somebody steps in and tries to help us come up with a solution. Especially if people are passing away at this magnitude, and it's just gonna get worse. I don't know. I don't know.

Mosher: Before I got home from this assignment, I took off all my clothes and I put on a brand-new set. I disinfected all of my stuff and then I took a very long shower with lots of soap when I did get home. And after that, I sort of just collapsed from emotional exhaustion. The reality of this pandemic sort of hit me at that point in a way that it hadn't before. It just suddenly felt very, very real to me.

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