New Jersey order forbids open-casket funerals. Now, families have no chance to say goodbye.

Since early March, a stream of mourners has coursed through the doors of Alison Perinchief’s Mount Holly funeral home looking to honor a loved one who has died from the coronavirus.

But late last week, Perinchief had to struggle with a first as a funeral director: Tell a grieving daughter she could not say goodbye to her mom, who died in a Burlington County nursing home from the coronavirus, nor honor her mother’s last wishes.

“Her mom wanted her hair done, wanted to be in a particular dress, wanted to have her makeup done,” Perinchief said. “I said that we’re not allowed to have an open casket funeral at this time. She just started crying. … She wanted to see mom, because mom always had talked about being in a particular dress."

As the coronavirus rages across New Jersey — already claiming more than 7,000 lives — state Health Department officials last week barred New Jersey funeral homes from holding open-casket ceremonies. The directive landed at the same time as South Jersey funeral homes were already feeling the growing impact of the pandemic, thanks to both a spike in local cases and the need for them to assist with a crush of bodies from the north.

Camden County funeral home owner LeRoy Wooster said he has accepted more than 150 bodies for cremation from North Jersey in the last month. That was in addition to nearly 500 bodies his three cremation units processed.

“In my 35 years, I have never seen such an influx of death ever in my life,” he said. “We have been working seven days a week, 12-hour days."

Late Thursday, state officials said they were reconsidering the open-casket ban. Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say people are not at risk of getting infected by the coronavirus from a dead body, but urge viewings to be limited to no more than 10 people — or ideally, livestreamed — while keeping social distance.

Health officials across the country pushed funeral homes to follow the new CDC directives, but New Jersey is one of the only states to bar open-casket ceremonies, according to industry representatives.

“You have to come face to face with death to understand it, and then you can move on,” George Kelder, CEO of New Jersey’s funeral directors association, said in an interview. “So what does the closed casket have to do with anything? If we’re all acknowledging we’re not fearful of the dead, but we’re fearful of the living that are in the room with us, it’s not very clear what you did.”

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Others understand the times call for unpleasant measures, and believe the directives are ultimately a positive for the industry, though the closed-casket ruling is the toughest.

“We understand that as you put more people into a room, that’s more chances of exposure,” Wooster said. “I want to keep my staff protected. I want to keep myself protected. And you also want to keep everyone who comes to the funeral home protected. But the fact that the casket must be closed does not allow family members to have their final goodbyes.”

In fact, funeral homes in Pennsylvania had been trying to lure New Jersey families by offering open-casket services, saying, "WE CAN HELP YOU.”

Those concerns had made their way to the New Jersey Department of Health, “and the Department is examining whether additional clarification is necessary to this order,” spokesperson Dawn Thomas said Thursday.

But there’s no simple answer for the toll of bodies.

Typically, New Jersey’s “last responders,” as the funeral directors call themselves, can bury and cremate 6,100 people per month, according to the state’s funeral directors association. In the pandemic, they’ve been forced to more than double their capacity.

Health officials have directed funeral homes and crematoriums to expand their hours of operation and remain open on weekends and holidays. They’ve also required mortuaries to contact facilities in other counties if they are at maximum capacity and can’t process any more bodies.

This has allowed North Jersey funeral homes, in an epicenter of the pandemic, to lean on South Jersey homes. And now directors are worried that as the pace of deaths quickens in the south — Gov. Phil Murphy this week acknowledged a spike in coronavirus cases in South Jersey — some worry they will become stretched too thin.

“What will happen in the South is you’ll get sort of a double hit,” Kelder said. “Southern funeral directors may find themselves in a reversal, where they will end up having to send their cremations northward.”

State officials agree with the prediction that funeral homes in the southern part of the state will be taxed in the coming weeks, but are still unsure how to solve the issue.

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“Will the North and Central funeral homes be there to help ... unburden them? … Yes,” Murphy said Thursday. “I can’t tell you exactly what that looks like.”

And while the virus has taxed the state’s funeral homes and crematoriums, it has also laid bare a reality about an overlooked aspect of the state’s health-care system.

“Death care is part of health care,” Kelder said. “We are touching the dead. We need gloves and we need masks and gowns and shoe covers. We acknowledge you have to protect the first responders and the police and the emergency rooms and the medical profession — however, you’re failing to recognize that we’re part of it."