COVID-19: “Deeply painful restrictions” on number of mourners to be lifted this month | UK News

The legal limit on the number of mourners at funerals will be lifted on May 17, the government confirmed.

At the moment, only 30 people are allowed to attend due to coronavirus restrictions.

But according to the government’s roadmap for the reopening, the size of the group will depend on how many people can be accommodated at the site safely and in a socially distant manner.

This will include indoor and outdoor venues.

The change came too late for Saleyha Ahsan, whose father died of COVID-19 in December.

Along with their shock and grief, Ms. Ahsan and her siblings had to choose which family members and friends could be invited to the funeral.

The doctor and reporter said, “We had to go through my dad’s iPhone to find out, my brother and I were sitting there thinking, ‘Who’s in the pecking order? “

“We didn’t know who was closest – we had our immediate family, our siblings and their children.

“And all the kids couldn’t come because they had to make room for my dad’s closest friends, so it was really hard that all of his grandchildren couldn’t come.

“Under normal circumstances, although it would be a quick process to pass away at the cemetery – maybe even the same day or the next – you would just send the word that the funeral is today, the funeral is tomorrow, all the time. world was just coming, ”she added.

“And for us, spiritually, the more people who come to pray, the better.”

Funeral director Jeremy Field said people who have a funeral scheduled for the next two weeks may now decide to postpone, so their loved ones can have a farewell.

“The more people you can have around you, the greater the sense of community, the greater humanity is in the grieving process,” he said.

“You want to have your loved ones around you.

“Now is the time to say how much someone means to you, how much you love them, how much you will be missed and how life is going …”