A funeral service company is facing fines of between NT$10,000 and NT$150,000 after failing to follow disease prevention regulations, the Hsinchu County Government said on Monday.
On April 17 last year, the county government had convened a meeting with all funeral service firms in the county to stipulate standard operating procedures for handling bodies of COVID-19 cases.
Based on the procedures, after a person with COVID-19 dies, the hospital and funeral service firm should first notify the county’s Health Bureau, which would in turn notify the Department of Civil Affairs to designate relevant agencies to deal with the case.
All bodies should be disinfected at the hospital before they are picked up by funeral service companies, Chiu said.
In this case, the funeral service company on June 11 picked up a body at a hospital at 5am and then allegedly abandoned the hearse, with the body, at an outside parking lot of the crematorium in Jhudong Township (竹東), she said.
The county government was notified of the death at 7am, she said.
When asked, the driver of the hearse, surnamed Chung (鍾), at first said the body was still at the hospital morgue, Chiu said.
However, the crematorium said the hearse had been parked outside from 5am until 4pm that day.
Chung later said the crematorium had refused to open the gates when he arrived and he was told to leave the hearse in the parking lot outside.
Chung added that he did not “abandon” the body and had been “on standby” after returning to the parking lot in another vehicle.
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