LONDON — It was a normal busy winter for British funeral director Matthew Uden until the second week of January. “Then it was like someone flicked a switch,” he said.
As Britain’s COVID-19 death toll surged into six figures, the phones at W. Uden & Sons, his family’s business in south London, started ringing almost non-stop.
Uden & Sons usually arranges about 10 funerals a day during the winter. Now it is doing 15 or 16, with dozens more bodies awaiting collection from hospitals and care homes.
With the deceased arriving faster than they can be cremated or buried, the company’s own mortuaries are packed with coffins, many pinned with a sign: “COVID-19 – TAKE PRECAUTION…
Keep on reading: ‘Loved ones, not numbers’: Inside a British funeral business as COVID-19 deaths surge