The nurses’ union has called for victims of COVID-19 to be buried with dignity because it is safe to do so, saying the laws being enforced date back to the bubonic plague of the 1500s.

“The MUMN cannot understand why this human suffering is being tolerated,” union president Paul Pace said in a letter to Superintendent of Public Health Charmaine Gauci.

He said there was no scientific evidence that COVID-19 transmission could take place through the coffin “where the body is wrapped in two body bags and the coffin sealed in plastic”.

When contacted, Pace said the union had received several complaints from people whose relatives had died from the virus and who could not be taken to church for a final send-off.

The funerals simply consisted of a rushed burial, the family members complained. 

Pace said nurses, as frontliners, were on the receiving end of the disappointment and anger being expressed by these people.

He said the union could not understand either why the graves of COVID-19 victims could not be reopened until 10 years had gone by.

“Today there is sufficient scientific knowledge that a dead person can only transmit the virus through body fluids. Having two body bags covering the body in a sealed coffin is more than sufficient to limit any transmission of the virus.”

He said it seemed that the authorities were enforcing a law enacted in the 1500s to control the bubonic plague. The same law was being used to enforce the closure of graves for 10 years, he added.

The MUMN appealed to the health superintendent to put an end to the additional and unnecessary suffering that relatives were having to endure when they were prevented from organising a proper funeral Mass followed by a dignified burial for their loved ones.

Times of Malta last April published an interview with a man whose father died of coronavirus and was buried within a few hours.

“My father’s burial took place less than six hours after his death,” the man said as he described the harrowing experience of losing his father and having to rush through the burial process.

Malta’s total COVID-19 cases soared to 3,442 on Wednesday, 536 of which were still active. There have been 41 reported deaths so far.