:quality(85)//arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-infobae.s3.amazonaws.com/public/Q7JAB52TOVDKZMNAEGHGZVNQ3M.jpg "The images of New York that shock the world: mass burials of victims of the coronavirus in gigantic mass graves")
New York reduced the amount of time you retain unclaimed corpses before they are buried in the city’s public cemetery: Under the new policy, the coroner’s office will keep bodies in storage for only 14 days before they are buried in the island’s cemetery Hart.
Typically, about 25 bodies a week are buried on the island, mainly for people whose families cannot afford a funeral or who are not claimed by their relatives. However, in recent days and with the coronavirus pandemic, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with about 24 burials each day, spokesman Jason Kersten said.
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Aerial footage taken by various news agencies shows workers digging graves on the island, a restricted-access strip of land about a mile from the Bronx that is the final resting place for more than a million mostly homeless New Yorkers.
About 40 coffins were lined up for burial on the island this Thursday, and two fresh trenches have been dug in recent days.
Burials are typically carried out by inmates at the city’s Rikers Island prison complex, but during the coronavirus pandemic, the job has been taken over by contractors.
City officials have not explained whether the increase in burials is due to pressure on burial houses to dispose of the bodies more quickly. The virus has killed hundreds of New York City residents each day this week.
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Hospitals, overwhelmed by work and deaths, place bodies in refrigerated trucks parked near their entrances.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week that authorities would seek to temporarily bury coronavirus victims on Hart Island if morgues and temporary storage units fill up. The Democratic mayor told NY1 television station that under such a contingency plan, the bodies of COVID-19 victims would be buried individually, not in mass graves, so that families can claim them later.
Aja Worthy-Davis, spokesman for the coroner’s office, said Thursday that “Currently he does not anticipate reaching the capacity of the morgue. However, as the Mayor has said, the city can explore the option of temporary burials on Hart Island if necessary. ” De Blasio has said that prisoners will not be used for the temporary burial of coronavirus victims.
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The city’s 2008 Pandemic Influenza Emergency Plan states that Hart Island would be used as a temporary burial site in the event the death toll reaches the tens of thousands and the other storage is full.
A Brooklyn undertaker, Thomas Cheeseman, said funeral homes are so overwhelmed that some people will inevitably end up being temporarily buried. Added that The new deadlines are putting pressure on companies as more and more families seek fixes for loved ones fallen by the coronavirus.
“We funeral directors are overwhelmed,” Cheeseman said. “We are flooded. The crematorium can’t even take bodies for two weeks. Funeral homes don’t have refrigerated trucks parked out front. “
With information from AP and images from Reuters
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