MOULTRIE, Ga. — Colquitt County’s funeral directors are changing the way they handle funerals in response to the coronavirus epidemic.

The Colquitt County Funeral Directors’ Association met Monday to receive information from health officials and to plan how to best protect the community and themselves from the virus.

Other than church services and sporting events, funerals are the largest gatherings of people in the community, Luke Strong III of Luke Strong and Son Mortuary said on Tuesday — and in the South they’re likely to involve close contact.

“We believe in large gatherings,” Strong said of Southerners. “We believe in hugging; we believe in shaking hands.”

All of which are believed to help the coronavirus spread from person to person.

By the end of Monday’s meeting, the funeral directors had crafted a letter that was sent out through multiple outlets Tuesday morning. The letter lays out changes that are effective immediately and will continue until further notice:

• Each Colquitt County funeral home will hold office hours from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to allow additional time for staff members to thoroughly sanitize its facilities each day and to limit potential exposure to the virus.

• Please limit in-person visits to necessary pre-need or at-need funeral business. Staff will be available by phone or email during business hours, and they will be accessible 24 hours a day by phone as they have always been.

• With the current recommendation to limit gatherings to very small numbers, funeral directors will conduct only graveside or memorial services in open outdoor areas with immediate family members in attendance. Church and chapel funerals will be suspended until further notice.

• Formal public visitations have been suspended until further notice. Private viewings for immediate family members will be arranged on an individual basis.

The recommendations are coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Funeral Directors Association, Strong said. He said the alternative would be for the family to postpone their loved one’s service until after the CDC issues new guidelines in response to better circumstances. He said no one has any idea how long that would be.

When Monday’s meeting began, Strong said the CDC was recommending no gathering larger than 50 people; by the time it adjourned, President Donald Trump was recommending no gathering larger than 10.

“We hope the public will be understanding that we’re doing this not only for their safety but for our safety as well,” Strong said.

He said all the local funeral homes have services already scheduled, but except for those, all future services will follow the guidelines in the letter until the CDC changes its recommendations.

Dr. Charles Ruis, the Southwest Health District Health Director — who was not at Monday’s meeting but was contacted later by The Observer — said holding the funeral outdoors will be beneficial as sunlight appears to deactivate the virus.

“At public health, we hope that families who have a loss can mourn in creative ways that will result in less transmission of the virus,” Ruis said.

No cases of COVID-19 — the illness that the new coronavirus causes — have been reported in Colquitt County, but several have been reported in the Albany and Valdosta areas, according to a website operated by the Georgia Department of Public Health.

Information provided at Monday’s meeting indicated some of the Albany cases are connected to a funeral that was held there, according to several of the meeting’s participants. Apparently an Atlanta-area person attended the funeral then later sought treatment at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. He or she was transferred to Atlanta to be closer to home, where the diagnosis of COVID-19 was made. Later, others who had been at the funeral also took ill.

Ellen Cobb Robinson of Cobb Funeral Chapel said the funeral directors are also negotiating with local medical facilities that have instituted new rules about who can access their buildings and how. And when funeral home staff goes to pick up a body, they’ll likely be wearing face masks to help protect themselves and the family of the deceased, she said.

Emphasizing the 24-hour phone access, Robinson said, “We’ll be here to serve families. That’s our job.”

Joe Baker of Baker Funeral Home said the procedures will be re-evaluated as conditions change. He said they’re not intended to be permanent.

In addition to Strong and Baker, signatories of the letter included Colquitt County Coroner Verlyn Brock, Bobby Cobb of Cobb Funeral Chapel, Johnny Litman III of Doris Strong and Litman Funeral Home, and Daughtry B. Melton III of Southview Mortuary.