JERUSALEM — A few people had already died alone of the coronavirus at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center when the hospital spokesman put to his bosses a question that had been gnawing at him.

Why had it been permissible for him to let a few journalists put on protective gear and come see the coronavirus ward, the spokesman, Avi Shushan, asked, but families of the patients were being kept out entirely, denied the chance to bid their loved ones a final farewell?

No one had a good answer.

Israeli hospitals were neither so overrun, nor their supplies of masks and gowns so depleted, that compassion had to be another casualty of the crisis, said Ronni Gamzu, the chief executive at Sourasky.

And so on the spot, the hospital’s management committee unanimously voted to change its policy.

Across the globe, hospitals have been reflexively refusing relatives the opportunity to visit patients dying of Covid-19, fearful that family members could contract the virus at the hospital or that relatives might unwittingly carry the virus with them when saying their goodbyes, infecting hospital staff.