COVID-19: New mass graves being dug as New York's morgues are overwhelmed

A satellite image shows new excavation being done on New York's Hart Island, while New York City officials have hired contract labourers to bury the dead on the island's potter's field, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak in the US.

A drone picture shows bodies being buried on New York's Hart Island. Hart Island is one of America's largest public cemeteries, with more than one million people buried there. New York authorities have used the site for over 150 years to lay to rest unclaimed bodies, unidentified people and residents whose families could not afford a private burial.

A truck loaded with bodies drives towards a burial trench on Hart Island. The New York Times reported that around 25 people are being buried on Hart Island a day since the coronavirus crisis started last month. Before the outbreak it was 25 a week.

It is unclear if those recently increased burials include those who have died from the coronavirus, or if they are people who passed away before the pandemic and were being moved from morgues to create space for the newly dead. But funeral directors said they had been told that any coronavirus victims not claimed within two weeks will be buried on Hart Island, at least temporarily.

The mile-long Hart island, which sits in a tidal estuary in the Bronx, became a potter's field in 1869 after the city purchased it from a private landholder to bury unknown and indigent residents.

Drone picture shows bodies being buried on New York's Hart Island. The site has long been run by the city's prisons department, and inmates from the nearby Rikers Island, one of America's most notorious jails, are typically paid to perform the burials - although not during the coronavirus pandemic.

A drone picture shows bodies being buried on New York's Hart Island. The island has served as a prison camp for captured Confederates in the US Civil War, a mental asylum, a sanatorium for tuberculosis sufferers, a youth detention center and even a Cold War-era missile base. It is often referred to as New York's "island of the dead" or "jail for the dead."

A refrigerated truck full of bodies drives on Hart Island.

Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island.

Drone pictures show bodies being buried on New York's Hart Island.

A motorman drives a ferry carrying a refrigerated truck full of bodies to Hart Island for burial.

Drone pictures show heavy machinery next to a third trench on New York's Hart Island.

Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island.

Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in the Bronx borough of New York.