Workers burying bodies in plain pine caskets in mass graves on Hart Island in the Bronx, New York (click to enlarge):
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| (Photo: John Minchillo/ AP) |
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| (Photo; Lucas Jackson/ REUTERS) |
A description from Syracuse.com:
The Post reports the bodies are typically wrapped in body bags and placed in pine boxes with their names written on top. A spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed Thursday that COVID-19 victims are among those being buried. [snip]
According to the Associated Press, New York City has shortened the amount of time it will hold unclaimed remains before they are buried in the city’s public cemetery. The medical examiner’s office will keep bodies in storage for just 14 days, reduced from 30 days, before interring them in the potter’s field on Hart Island; some overwhelmed hospitals have been placing bodies in refrigerated trucks parked outside their doors.This is a tragic, sobering reminder of the brutal reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it's changing the way we live, and look at life, in ways we never thought we would see in this country.
Normally, about 25 bodies a week are buried on Hart Island, mostly for people whose families can’t afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives. Kersten says the city is now burying five times as many bodies — close to 25 a day — as the death toll grows from coronavirus.
