A hearse is parked in front of a funeral home in Oslo, Norway
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July 15, 2020 9: 42
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In Norway, the undertakers turn to the State to survive
Pierre-Henry Deshayes
Agence France-Presse
OSLO – If the pandemic of a new coronavirus has a lot killed on the planet, it has left some undertakers désoeuvrés in Norway, forcing them to turn to the State to stay alive.
Decline of the death, funeral ceremonies cancelled… due to maturing of the success of the country to stem the COVID-19, a half-dozen Norwegian companies of a funeral director, and have recently resorted to the use of public aid to keep the economy afloat, show public records.
In the family Land, where it accompanies the dead to their final resting place from father to son since three generations, we had never seen it.
“When the measures against the coronavirus arrived, it turned out that they have had the skin not only of the coronavirus, but also that of other viruses,” explains the AFP Erik Lande, now at the head of the family business in the south of the kingdom.
“So much so that a part of the old and sick who would have died in normal time disappeared into thin air”, he adds.
A large thirty-by-month normally, the number of beer has fallen, according to him, less than ten in the weeks that followed the establishment of a system of semi-confinement. And not only because of the COVID-19.
To pay for the fixed costs such as rent and insurance, Landes begravelsesbyrå has received nearly 32,000 crowns (around 4700 $CDN) of public money.
Closing schools, bars and many public spaces, prohibition of gatherings, sporting and cultural events, hitting the brakes on travel abroad: Norway had announced on march 12 the measures “the most intrusive” than it has ever known in time of peace, the confession even of the government.
Today nearly all raised, these provisions have helped to curb the epidemic in contrast to Sweden’s neighbour, which is distinguished by an approach that is significantly more flexible and where the virus persists.
Light at the end of the tunnel
Of the approximately 573 000 deaths identified in the world because of the disease, only 253 have been registered on the ground Norwegian. The kingdom of 5.4 million people no ill of the COVID-19 in the intensive care unit and only a handful of people remained hospitalized.
Thanks, presumably, to the isolation of older persons and the respect of the gestures barriers, the mortality seems to have declined: the Norway, for example, has lamented about 6% of deaths in less in may than a year earlier, and 13% in June.
In Oslo, Verd Begravelsesbyrå has affected nearly 37,000 crowns in state aid after seeing his business collapse, not because of a decline in the number of funerals, but because they have taken a different format.
“With the emergence of the coronavirus, a lot of customers have forgone the ceremony,” says the director general, Henrik Tveter, who states that it is “60 to 70%” of the price of a funeral.
By choice, to avoid contamination, but also because the maximum number of participants has long been strictly limited by the authorities and that some chapels are too small to ensure separation physical.
In Ålesund (west), Alfa Begravelsesbyrå has, at one time, put his five employees to partial unemployment, and also tour to the State after a fall of 70% of its sales between march and may.
But, as his colleagues who are all state of standardization with the reopening of the country, the owner of Odd Sverre Øie said to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“We know that, having regard to the age pyramid, a number of people are going to die in Norway this year,” he said. “So that we will no doubt catch up in the fall when the flu and other diseases of this kind will make their reappearance.”
