Starting in April, FEMA will begin offering financial assistance to cover some of the costs of certain funerals during the pandemic. The assistance will be retroactive to Jan. 20 of last year.
One important requirement deals with the death certificate, which must indicate the death was caused by COVID.
Some families who lost loved ones to the virus say their death certificates are fundamentally flawed.
On average, a funeral will cost between $7,000 and $12,000. It’s money many Louisiana families have spent in the past year as the state’s death toll from covid is now above 10,000. Ut Thi Weaver died of covid last July.
“She was a feisty old lady,” said Barbara Weaver.
Weaver said her family wants to apply to the FEMA program that will help cover some of the cost from their mother’s COVID related funeral. They recently discovered that her death certificate lists the cause of death as “cardiopulmonary."
To be eligible for the financial aid, FEMA states the death certificate must indicate the death is attributed to COVID.
“In the last 48 hours, I’ve been very emotional reliving her trauma by looking at her death certificate and realizing it’s incorrect,” Weaver said.
Weaver said her mother’s final days were in a local hospital’s COVID ICU wing.
“No one gets put in there unless you test positive for COVID,” Weaver said.
In a Facebook support group, other families told Weaver they’re trying to get modified death certificates. One woman wrote to Weaver explain how after her son died of COVID, his cause of death was listed as “natural causes.”
The woman stated her son was 37-years old.
“Some of them said they had to be confrontational with the attending doctors in trying to get this stuff changed. Can you imagine the constant wound that’s getting picked at because of this?” Weaver said.
Even before FEMA’s offer to reimburse funeral expenses, we connected with other people who had similar issues with their loved one’s death certificate.
“It’s my mom. She died. It should say what she died from,” Joan Soboloff said.
Last month, we introduced you to Joan Soboloff. Her mother died from COVID last December, but COVID was not listed as the cause of death on her death certificate. This past week, Soboloff says she got a new death certificate with the correct information.
“For all the momma’s out there and all the daddies and sons and daughters out there who died from covid, they deserve this dignity,” Barbara Weaver said.
We reached out the hospital system that handled Ut Thi Weaver’s death certificate. It said while it cannot speak to a specific person’s situation due to medical privacy, it is willing to work with families regarding such issues.
There are some loud critics of a government aid program for funerals. But for families like the Weavers, getting the record right is more important than getting the money.
