NORTHFIELD,Ohio — The pandemic has been tough on those caring for people who have died from COVID-19.

What You Need To Know

  • The Ohio Funder Directors Association sent a letter to Governor DeWine asking for death care workers to be included in the state's vaccination plan

  • The industry has had to make a lot of changes to accommodate the pandemic

  • Ferfolia Funeral Home is among the funeral homes that have made significant changes 

Now, Gov. Mike DeWine is being urged by the Ohio Funeral Directors Association to include funeral home employees in the state’s COVID-19 vaccination plan. 

Melissa Sullivan, the executive director of the Ohio Funeral Directors Association, said she is getting slammed with calls from tired funeral workers who want to get vaccinated as COVID deaths continue to mount. 

“I spoke to a funeral home yesterday that has four employees, three were out. It was one director left to run the entire operations of the funeral home. So if families are having to postpone services, and funeral directors are just truly at the breaking point. They are exhausted,” Sullivan said.

Ferfolia Funeral Home Directors Mary Ferfolia Lansky and Donald Ferfolia Jr. said they have made changes to make sure people are safe during services.

Chairs are set up at least six feet apart as aunt and nephew funeral directors prepare for a socially distanced service.

“Pre-pandemic, each individual parlor would have 40 chairs set up in the parlor, whereas now you can see we have 10 chairs in each parlor that would accommodate 20 core people at any given time," said Mary Ferfolia Lansky.

"We’ve had to be very flexible and our families have been very flexible with arranging funerals, being that we’re only having one family in the building at a time.” 

One of the ways things have changed at the funeral home is people can only enter the building through the front and exit through the back during services.

"We have chosen not to continue a traditional register book for our families because of sanitation purposes, so what we do is we have a sign-in card for our families. We ask that they sign their name and address, it’s placed in the plexiglass box and the pens are sanitized after each use.” 

Mary Ferfolia Lansky and Don Ferfolia Jr. said this winter has been tough. 

"We have had many, many COVID deaths, and unfortunately, we’ve had three families that have lost both their moms and dads,” said Ferfolia Lansky. "During this time, it isn’t all COVID, it definitely is a mixture that we are experiencing at this time, but at a pace that we have not been accustomed to.” 

Donald Ferfolia said construction is underway to store bodies to keep up with demand.

It's something he thought would never have to happen.

"We never imagined that at this point that we would even be thinking about construction of this sort for the continued shelter of folks who have passed away. And a lot of it has to do with the numbers of families that are calling on us in a very short amount of time,” Donald Ferfolia said.

The directors of the nearly 100-year-old business hope they can get themselves and their staff vaccinated soon to keep providing their services and calm some nerves. 

"We’re exposed on two fronts. Not only maybe the folks who have passed away as a result of COVID, but also with the families that we’re serving, and that is actually kind of a bigger scare for us because of the factor of the unknown," Donald Ferfolia Jr. said.