‘We are tired’: Kansas City funeral homes feeling strain as deaths rise in COVID surge

As the number of COVID cases skyrocket due to spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, Kansas City’s mortuaries are feeling the strain as the number of deaths climb also.

“We are tired,” said Duane Harvey, assistant general manager of Lawrence A. Jones & Sons Funeral Chapels. “We’ve been running hard.”

Lawrence A. Jones, which has locations in Kansas City and Kansas City, Kansas, handles an average of 40 to 50 services a month. But since the latest surge, they’ve had more than 60 services in both November and December, a good portion likely associated with COVID.

“I believe it was one day about a week or so ago, we got a 10 death calls in one day,” Harvey said. “Eight of the 10 was COVID.”

There has been a surge in the number of deaths within the last 90 days and the funeral home is doing the best it can to try to handle each situation. Despite the increase in number of deaths, the funeral home is able to have services when the family wants them.

“It’s just making our load a little heavy, but we haven’t had to actually delay any services,” said Harvey. “It’s just trying on us sometimes and the wear and tear is even more so because they have made our case count escalate.”

The funeral home does self care with it staff to make sure that everybody is okay, but there is still a lot of unknown related to the pandemic and the need to be cautious.

Harvey said he knows that they aren’t the only ones feeling the impact of the rise in deaths.

“We know the morgues are full, the medical examiner’s office is full and of course we’re full, but you know we are able to still accommodate,” Harvey said.

Johnson County health department officials are working with hospitals and the medical examiner about “how to handle excessive deaths because they are running out of morgue capacity,” health director Sanmi Areola said during a Johnson County Board of County Commissioners meeting Friday.

Hospitals have contacted the county’s emergency management and medical examiner’s office because they are running near capacity, said Dr. Diane Peterson, Johnson County’s chief medical examiner. So far this year, however, only one person was transferred to the medical examiner’s office for storage due to a lack of capacity at a hospital.

Hospitals reaching capacity can contact the medical examiner’s office for storage. Hospitals have also been encouraged to have conversations with families and patients regarding funeral plans prior to death. By having the plans in place, hospitals should have little to no delay in releasing the person to the funeral home after death, Peterson said.

To help families prepare, Peterson suggested people go to www.funeralbasics.org, which has a funeral planning checklist to assist patients and families, and www.funeralskc.org, a website that lists local funeral homes and their prices to assist in financial planning and choice of funeral homes.

At the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, the hospital saw five COVID related deaths over the weekend, said Jill Chadwick, a spokeswoman for the health system.

The medical center which has seen a spike COVID related deaths watches its morgue’s capacity closely and so far has been able to make room as well as coordinate with funeral homes, she said.

Olathe Medical Center has a small morgue that has limited capacity, said Stephanie Manning, director of marketing. It also has a truck that is always on-site to provide additional capacity when needed.

“Whether or not it’s turned on and used depends on if we need to implement the surge plan,” she said.

The truck wasn’t in use on Wednesday, but there has been times throughout the pandemic that they have had to use the truck, including for the recent surge in cases.

As a precaution going into the holidays, the University of Kansas Health System’s St. Francis Campus in Topeka reached out shortly before Christmas to Shawnee County Emergency Management with a request for assistance with overflow morgue space, said Nancy Burkhardt, director of marketing and communications.

The county provided the hospital with a mobile morgue unit on Dec. 21 and the hospital has had to use it on a limited basis since then, Burkhardt said. The unit remains on-site, but the hospital wasn’t using it Wednesday.

“Even a small number of additional deaths per week can have an impact on hospitals, funeral homes, transport companies and our county morgue,” she said.