Coronavirus: New York buries dead in mass graves

In New York City, which consolidates its sad status as the center of the coronavirus epidemic in the United States, the question of the fate of the ever-increasing number of dead is being asked. The images have struck people in recent days: bodies, covered with sheets or tarpaulins, transported by employees in protective suits on stretchers in refrigerated trucks, now ubiquitous around hospitals in the first American metropolis.

The city therefore began Thursday to bury his dead in large mass graves on the island of Hart Island, long dubbed "the island of the dead" . Officially, these are "temporary burials" , while mortuaries and undertakers are overwhelmed. Dozens of bodies of coronavirus victims, not claimed by their relatives, therefore began to be buried there on Thursday, according to several local media.

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Located northeast of the Bronx, a working-class neighborhood north of Manhattan, Hart Island has been used as a New York mass grave since 1869. Over a million people unidentified, unclaimed or for whom loved ones have been unable to pay a funeral is already buried there. "We will continue to use the island for this purpose during the crisis and it is likely that people who died as a result of Covid-19 in one of these cases will be buried there in the coming days , " said a spokesperson for New York City.

Images filmed this week by drone for the New York Post show dozens of sketchy coffins being buried on Hart Island.

Quoted by several media sources, a spokesman for the city's prison services, which manage the place, said that around 24 people were buried every day today, compared to an average of 25 per week before the pandemic. On Friday, the mayor of New York implicitly acknowledged that bodies of people who died from coronavirus were buried on Hart Island.

New York State remains the most affected by the pandemic in the United States, with 777 new deaths in the past 24 hours and 7,844 deaths in total since the arrival of the coronavirus in the region.

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Usually burials, taken from the famous nearby Rikers Island prison, provide burials. But given the risk of contamination and concerns about the spread of the virus in detention, the task is currently being carried out by employees of a subcontractor, said a spokesman for New York City.

The prison services have opened a register which lists all the people buried on the island since 1977 and whose identity is known. The management of the island has been regularly criticized, the prison services being accused of not maintaining the site properly. In early 2018, several local media had shown images of bones scattered on the island's shores, from skeletons discovered by erosion. The city council voted, at the end of 2019, the transfer of the management of Hart Island to the city's parks and gardens service, planned for 2021. The change of manager also aims to make the site more accessible for the relatives of people buried on the island.