The death toll from COVID-19 is rising. How is Wyoming preparing to handle those deaths?

Joey Casada and David Purrington — funeral practitioners at Casper funeral home Bustard & Jacoby — didn’t have much time to talk.

The pair, two of the funeral home’s four licensed funeral practitioners, had about 30 minutes in between appointments at the funeral home when a reporter and photographer visited them earlier this month. With their schedule, it ended up being more like 20.

A lot of things have changed in the last few months with the COVID-19 pandemic, already complicating a business that is as much about human relationships as it is about cold, hard logistics. In each room of the building, bottles of hand sanitizer sat beside floor models of urns and orderly displays of pamphlets on the grieving process and the logistics of funeral preparations. In between meetings, the long, wooden conference table was subject to disinfecting before the next family entered.

In the chapel, socially distanced stands of chairs are placed several feet apart before a stand of cameras and video screens to allow relatives unable to attend safely to view proceedings from afar. That change, made to accommodate mourning families in the interest of public safety, has made their jobs slightly more difficult, they said. Bustard & Jacoby required masks even before Natrona County had a mandate, and the number of mourners allowed in the building has been limited during services, a precautionary measure that has, admittedly, rankled some of their clients.

Read more: https://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/health/the-death-toll-from-covid-19-is-rising-how-is-wyoming-preparing-to-handle-those/article_eaa0f78b-625b-5779-9df2-0b50b1996cb0.html
(Casper Star Tribune)