CORONAVIRUS
January 3, 2022
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Federal program offers cash to cover COVID-19 funeral costs
FUNERALS FUNDED. A heart memorial on the
north side of Center Congregational Church for those
lost during the COVID-19 pandemic is seen in
Meriden, Connecticut, in this November 5, 2021 file
photo. A federal program is reimbursing families up
to $9,000 for funeral costs for loved ones who died
of COVID-19. As of December 6, only about 226,000
people had been issued reimbursements for funeral
costs from the Federal Emergency Management
Agency. (Dave Zajac/Record-Journal via AP, File)
By Steve LeBlanc
The Associated Press
OSTON — When Wanda Olson’s
son-in-law died in March after
contracting COVID-19, she and
her daughter had to grapple with more
than just their sudden grief. They had to
come up with money for a cremation.
Even without a funeral, the bill came to
nearly $2,000, a hefty sum that Olson
initially covered. She and her daughter
then learned of a federal program that
reimburses families up to $9,000 for
funeral costs for loved ones who died of
COVID-19.
Olson’s
daughter
submitted
an
application to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), received a
deposit by June, and was able to reimburse
her mother the $1,974.
“Had this not been available, we would
have been paying the money ourselves,”
said Olson, 80, of Villa Rica, Georgia.
“There wasn’t any red tape. This was a
very easy, well-handled process.”
As of December 6, about 226,000 people
had shared in the nearly $1.5 billion that
FEMA has spent on funeral costs that
occurred after January 20, 2020, the date
of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in
the U.S. With the nation’s coronavirus
death toll topping 825,000, it’s clear that
many families who are eligible for
reimbursement have yet to take
advantage of the funeral benefit.
Her son-in-law was travelling a lot,
working on air conditioning systems in
theaters, restaurants, and businesses,
when he began feeling ill, Olson said. After
a few days at home, he went to the hospital
and was put on a ventilator. He died
several weeks later.
“He could never overcome it,” she said.
To be eligible for reimbursement, death
certificates for those who died after May
16, 2020, must indicate that the death was
attributed to COVID-19.
For deaths that occurred in the early
B
months of the pandemic — from January
20 to May 16, 2020 — death certificates
must be accompanied with a signed state-
ment from a medical examiner, coroner, or
the certifying official listed on the
certificate indicating that COVID-19 was
the cause or a contributing cause of death.
The percentage of individuals who have
been reimbursed varies dramatically from
state to state — from nearly 40% in North
Carolina and Maryland to fewer than 15%
in Idaho and Oregon, according to
state-by-state data compiled by FEMA.
While the reimbursement must go
directly to individuals, some funeral
directors have taken on the task of
informing grieving families of the benefit.
After the benefit was first announced,
David Shipper, owner of the Sunset
Funeral Home, Cremation Center &
Cemetery in Evansville, Indiana, took out
ads to let people know that help was
available if they qualified.
“Nine thousand dollars — that’s a lot of
money. We wanted to find a way to tell
people about it,” he said. “We stopped
advertising some time ago, but when we
have a new family with a death from
COVID, we tell them about the program.”
Workers at the home will sit down with
families, gather the needed paperwork,
contact FEMA on the phone, and help walk
them through the process if they ask, he
said.
Many families may simply be unaware
of the benefit, but others may opt against
seeking the cash out of reluctance to revisit
the pain of the death, Shipper said. He said
the better time to seek the help is when
planning the funeral.
“They’re much more likely to take
advantage right then than if they’ve
already spent the money and don’t want to
open it up again,” Shipper said.
The largest states account for some of
the biggest shares of the FEMA
reimbursement money.
The program has paid out more than
21,000 reimbursements in California and
Texas, which have both reported more
than 74,000 COVID-19 deaths. Residents
applied for more than $141 million in each
state.
The fewest number of reimbursements
have occurred in Vermont, where 123
people were awarded a total of about
$704,000.
Expenses covered under the FEMA
program
include
funeral
services,
cremation, and interment, as well as the
costs for caskets or urns, burial plots, or
cremation niches, markers or headstones,
transportation or transfer of remains,
clergy or officiant services, and the use of
funeral home equipment or staff.
The program has been funded using
federal stimulus funds, and money
remains available. No online applications
are allowed.
After all required documents are
received and verified, it typically takes
fewer than 30 days to determine if an
individual is eligible, according to FEMA.
Once eligibility is confirmed, applicants
who request direct deposit may receive the
money in a matter of days. It may take
longer for applicants who request a check.
The reimbursement is one way of
helping ease the emotional and financial
burden that the pandemic has wreaked on
communities across the country, according
to Ellen Wynn McBrayer, president of
Jones-Wynn Funeral Homes & Crematory
in Villa Rica, Georgia.
She recalled one woman who lost her
mother, husband, and one of her children
to the disease in the span of six months.
One of the workers at the funeral home
also succumbed to the virus.
“To have to help a grieving family is hard
on a normal day, but to see so many
deaths,” she said. “COVID has just broken
a lot of hearts and taken a lot of lives.”
Pandemic mystery: Scientists focus on COVID’s animal origins
By Laura Ungar
AP Science Writer
early two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the
origin of the virus tormenting the world remains
shrouded in mystery.
Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and
jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through
another animal. Others theorize it escaped from a Chinese
lab.
Now, with the global COVID-19 death toll surpassing
5.2 million on the second anniversary of the earliest
human cases, a growing chorus of scientists is trying to
keep the focus on what they regard as the more plausible
“zoonotic,” or animal-to-human, theory, in the hope that
what’s learned will help humankind fend off new viruses
and variants.
“The lab-leak scenario gets a lot of attention, you know,
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on places like Twitter,” but “there’s no evidence that this
virus was in a lab,” said University of Utah scientist
Stephen Goldstein, who with 20 others wrote an article in
the journal Cell in August laying out evidence for animal
origin.
Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the
University of Arizona who contributed to the article, had
signed a letter with other scientists last spring saying
both theories were viable. Since then, he said, his own and
others’ research has made him even more confident than
he had been about the animal hypothesis, which is “just
way more supported by the data.”
Worobey in November published a COVID-19 timeline
linking the first known human case to the Huanan
Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where live
animals were sold.
“The lab-leak idea is almost certainly a huge distraction
that’s taking focus away from what actually happened,”
he said.
Others aren’t so sure. Over the summer, a review
ordered by President Joe Biden showed that four U.S.
intelligence agencies believed with low confidence that
the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a
human, and one agency believed with moderate
confidence that the first infection was linked to a lab.
Some supporters of the lab-leak hypothesis have
theorized that researchers were accidentally exposed
because of inadequate safety practices while working with
samples from the wild, or perhaps after creating the virus
in the laboratory. U.S. intelligence officials have rejected
suspicions China developed the virus as a bioweapon.
The continuing search for answers has inflamed
tensions between the U.S. and China, which has accused
the U.S. of making it the scapegoat for the disaster. Some
experts fear the pandemic’s origins may never be known.
From bats to people
Scientists said in the Cell paper that SARS-CoV-2,
which causes COVID-19, is the ninth documented
coronavirus to infect humans. All previous ones
originated in animals.
That includes the virus that caused the 2003 SARS
epidemic, which also has been associated with markets
selling live animals in China.
Many researchers believe wild animals were
intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2, meaning they were
infected with a bat coronavirus that then evolved.
Scientists have been looking for the exact bat coronavirus
involved, and in September identified three viruses in
bats in Laos more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any known
viruses.
Worobey suspects raccoon dogs were the intermediate
host. The fox-like mammals are susceptible to
coronaviruses and were being sold live at the Huanan
market, he said.
“The gold-standard piece of evidence for an animal
origin” would be an infected animal from there, Goldstein
said. “But as far as we know, the market was cleared out.”
Earlier this year, a joint report by the World Health
Organization (WHO) and China called the transmission of
the virus from bats to humans through another animal
the most likely scenario and a lab leak “extremely
unlikely.”
But that report also sowed doubt by pegging the first
known COVID-19 case as an accountant who had no
connection to the Huanan market and first showed
symptoms on December 8, 2019. Worobey said proponents
of the lab-leak theory point to that case in claiming the
virus escaped from a Wuhan Institute of Virology facility
near where the man lived.
According to Worobey’s research, however, the man
said in an interview that his December 8 illness was
actually a dental problem, and his COVID-19 symptoms
began on December 16, a date confirmed in hospital
records.
Worobey’s analysis identifies an earlier case: a vendor
in the Huanan market who came down with COVID-19 on
December 11.
Animal threats
Experts worry the same sort of animal-to-human
transmission of viruses could spark new pandemics — and
worsen this one.
Since COVID-19 emerged, many types of animals have
gotten infected, including pet cats, dogs, and ferrets; zoo
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