Funeral homes embrace live streaming to prevent COVID-19 spread

Many funeral homes are embracing live streaming and offering it to families at no additional cost to encourage social distancing and prevent the spread of COVID-19 during funeral services. 

Joseph O'Neil, the managing director of O'Neil Funeral Homes in London, Ont., added the live streaming feature just three months before the COVID-19 outbreak. 

"It's been a blessing in disguise," he said. "If in two days [the government] limits crowds to no bigger than five, with the live streaming, we can still have a service."

On Tuesday, the provincial government declared a state of emergency and ramped up social distancing measures, including closing restaurants, bars, indoor recreation centres and prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people. 

Funeral homes had already taken many precautions, including limiting visitations and services to immediate family only, which is what has made live streaming an important component during the pandemic. 

"It's hard when someone passes away and you want to have your family and friends be able to participate in that, and now they're put in a position where they have to say 'No, sorry so and so can't come,'" said Cassi Mask-Wildman, the operations director for Logan and Evans Funeral Home in London, Ont., who recently added the live streaming option to their list of services . 

"It's hard and it's not helpful to the grieving process, so we still have to be mindful of that while protecting our community," she said, adding that the live streaming has and will become a huge help in the days to come. 

O'Neil, Logan, Evans and Denning's funeral homes, which serve several communities in southwestern Ontario, are offering the live streaming service, which usually costs a couple hundred dollars, free of charge during this time.

"I think this allows people to feel a little bit better about staying home, rather than coming out to the funeral to pay their respects," Josh Denning, the manager of media services for Denning's Funeral Home, said. 

"It seems to be the platform that reaches the most people," he said, adding that this past week, one of their services had more than 500 virtual attendees. 

In addition to offering live streaming, funeral homes are still taking extra precautions on-site for the limited people who do attend services, including increased cleaning, setting a limit on visitation hours and, in some cases, pausing certain services. 

But the future of funeral services remains uncertain depending on how this outbreak unfolds.

"One of the challenges that we're facing is day by day, we come up with a policy  — all of us and funeral service — and we to change and adapt," O'Neil said.