People asking for postmortem COVID tests to pay for loved ones’ funerals

GILLETTE — The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a lot of crazy things over the last two years.
In the latest in that long list of craziness, people are pushing for COVID-19 to be listed on their loved ones’ death certificates as a cause of death, sometimes even when there were no symptoms of COVID when they died.
It has everything to do with federal money available to help with funerals that were a result of COVID-19.
Campbell County Coroner Paul Wallem said it is a complete 180-degree turn from the first year of the pandemic, when people did not want COVID-19 listed on their loved ones’ death certificates.
Now, that’s completely changed, because there is money available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to help pay for COVID-19 funerals.
This week, Wallem said that in three of four recent cases, people asked for a COVID test to be done on the body.
One had been in the hospital the day before the request for a test was made, and he didn’t show any signs of COVID. In another case, “the request came in five days later, so it wouldn’t be accurate on a body dead that long.”
Wallem worried that he would see an influx of these requests as word gets out about these FEMA funeral dollars.
Since April 2021, FEMA has provided more than $2 billion in COVID-19 funeral assistance to support more than 300,000 applicants. FEMA also launched a new outreach campaign in March to reach additional eligible families in need.
“It could become a pretty common thing,” Wallem said.
Testing for COVID at the hospital can get pretty expensive, he said. He worried that if the trend continues and he gets 25 or 50 requests for tests, the money would have to come out of someone’s budget.
He said he would talk to Campbell County Public Health to see if it would be able to do those tests free of charge.
There already have been instances where doctors were asked to lie on the death certificate. Wallem said a funeral home in another Wyoming county allegedly called a doctor, asking if he would put COVID on the certificate anyway because the family didn’t have any money.
The doctor refused, Wallem said.
As the coroner, it’s his job to investigate deaths and help grieving families get closure, but there needs to be a line drawn in this case.
“If there are no symptoms and it’s pretty obvious they’re trying to get money for the funeral, not for closure on what happened with a loved one, that (test) should probably be paid for privately,” Wallem said.
Applicants eligible for the FEMA funeral money may qualify for up to $9,000 for each deceased individual per application, with a maximum of $35,000 for families who may have multiple funeral expenses due to COVID-19. The average award is $6,500.
As of March 15, FEMA had received 653 applications from Wyoming, and 441 were successful, for a success rate of 67.5%. About $2.4 million has been awarded in Wyoming, the fourth lowest in the country, after Vermont, Alaska and Hawaii. That comes out to about $5,445 per funeral.
This story was published on April 9, 2022.