Cyberattack reported on Florida Department of Health, death certificates withheld nationwide

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – Funeral homes are having difficulty getting death certificates to families in a timely manner.

The problem began shortly after ransomware thieves hacked the Florida Department of Health.

Currently, funeral homes fill out a huge stack of forms by hand for each death certificate they process.

The families say they are waiting for answers from the health department about when they can bury their relatives.

Fonda Emard says her heart is heavy after her mother died in June.

It is not possible to proceed further because she cannot obtain the death certificate.

“This was one of the hardest days of my life,” said Emard. “It’s so upsetting and sad and heartbreaking when these families receive these certificates to bury or cremate their loved ones.”

Grieving families across the state are facing this issue, which stems from a reported outage at the Florida Department of Health that brought down the online registration system.

“We have to sell the house,” Emard said. “Without the death certificate, we can’t sell the house. It’s been about two and a half weeks now.”

The Florida Morticians Association posted this warning on its website:

Many of you have experienced an outage in the EDRS system which has severely impacted our normal use of completing and submitting death certificates and burial permits in a timely manner. With this in mind, we must now return to the more modern way of completing the death certificate and burial permit, i.e. using the long form and three-page burial permit, taking the death certificate to the doctor’s office for signature and taking the signed death certificate along with the burial permit to the health department.

We hope that the disruption to the EDRS system is short-lived, but until then, the entire State of Florida must conduct business this way.