A large number of bodies of Covid-19 victims, who died last spring, are still lying in the refrigerated trucks along the Brooklyn waterfront in New York, Washington Post reported. The bodies are stored in the makeshift morgues on the 39th Street Pier in Sunset Park.
The officials of the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner have confirmed that the bodies of about 750 covid-19 victims are still being stored inside the trucks, according to a report by The City.
“Long-term storage was created at the height of the pandemic to ensure that families could lay their loved ones to rest as they see fit,” Mark Desire, a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office told the Associated Press.
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The city will try to reduce the number of bodies being held on the Sunset Park pier “in the near future” and let families know about the transfers, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
In March-April 2020, New York City was among the hardest-hit areas in the world by the Covid-19 pandemic. The medical examiner’s office was equipped to handle 20 daily deaths. However, they were flooded by around 200 deaths every day because of the pandemic.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had sent 85 refrigerated trucks to serve as temporary morgues in New York last year as the city’s permanent morgues ran out of space owing to massive deaths caused by the coronavirus.
