It’s 8:30 p.m. and Sherry Bensimon, a funeral director at Riverside Memorial Chapels of New Jersey, in Hackensack, is still at work. A colleague who just returned from Hackensack University Medical Center tells her that the hospital’s refrigerated trailers, one of which arrived that day, were already at capacity. Each holds about 50 bodies — and that’s in addition to the hospital’s two morgues. “They’re full already?” Ms. Bensimon’s voice cracks. “Oh God.”

We talk a lot about the emergency medical workers and doctors and nurses whom we clap for every evening. But funeral directors are the last responders on the front lines — the people who come after someone has died. While they help families say their final goodbyes, funeral directors and their teams operate largely in the background. “We’re not a profession where we feel you need to recognize some of us,” said Vanessa Granby, 29, a director at Granby’s Funeral Service in the Bronx.

They’re vital to public health, but they’re also at high risk of exposure to the coronavirus. This week, BuzzFeed News reported that scientists in Thailand documented what they believe is the first instance of the virus’s transmission from the dead to the living, amplifying the conversation about the need to support those in the “death care” sector. Along with health care workers, they’re running short on personal protective equipment.