At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City in the United States last year, city councils began storing corpses of Covid-19 victims in refrigerated vehicles. Unfortunately, hundreds of them are still waiting for their funeral a year later.
According to a local media report, a city council health committee confirmed last week that the remains of around 750 Covid-19 victims are still being held in the trucks parked along the Brooklyn waterfront.
City, a local news website, reported that officials are now trying to reduce the number of bodies.
Most of the bodies will likely end up on Hart Island
Hart Island, a mile-long landmass in Long Island Sound, is home to the largest mass grave in the United States, which has been used to bury the city’s poor and unclaimed for more than a century.
The bodies waiting to be buried could end up there too.
Dina Maniotis, the deputy executive commissioner of the medical examiner’s office, reportedly told the health committee that his office had attempted to contact families of Covid-19 victims and will move the bodies to Hart Island as soon as they get the Giving permission.
In March and April last year, New York City was one of the hardest hit areas in the world.
“At the height of the pandemic, long-term storage was put in place to ensure families could rest their loved ones as they pleased,” Mark Desire, spokesman for the doctor’s office, told the Associated Press last week. “With sensitivity and compassion, we continue to work with individual families on a case-by-case basis during their grief.”
Most of the families of the victims who remained in the trucks have said they want the Hart Island burial option, Maniotis told the Health Commission. In some cases the city lost contact with the families.
The refrigerator trucks were parked outside hospitals during the worst days of the pandemic for the city and became one of the most visible signs of their toll.
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