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Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc...and-pottersfield-city-cemetery-burials-2020-4
New York City will bury bodies on a remote island if they're unclaimed after 6 days because coronavirus deaths are overwhelming morgues
Dave Mosher
5 hours ago
The coronavirus pandemic is killing hundreds of people in New York City each day.
To accommodate the dead before families claim them, the city's medical examiner expanded temporary refrigerated storage to hold 3,600 decedents instead of the usual 900.
However, a policy change posted to the medical examiner's website suggests that room is running out: Bodies that families don't claim within six days of death will be catalogued and interred in a mass grave site on a Bronx island.
Funeral directors say other policies described by the medical examiner during a conference call on Tuesday could make it even harder to serve families.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
As coronavirus infections peak in New York City, its morgues are quickly running out of room, exceeding their already vastly expanded capacity.
The city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner quietly posted a significant policy change to its website on Tuesday: Instead of holding some bodies in refrigerated city storage for 30 days until they are claimed by families, the city will now hold them for less than a week.
Starting Tuesday, decedents who are not claimed by a funeral home within that short window will be sent to the Bronx's Hart Island, where a mass graveyard called City Cemetery contains more than 1 million unclaimed bodies — the largest such site in the US...
New York City will bury bodies on a remote island if they're unclaimed after 6 days because coronavirus deaths are overwhelming morgues
Dave Mosher
5 hours ago
The coronavirus pandemic is killing hundreds of people in New York City each day.
To accommodate the dead before families claim them, the city's medical examiner expanded temporary refrigerated storage to hold 3,600 decedents instead of the usual 900.
However, a policy change posted to the medical examiner's website suggests that room is running out: Bodies that families don't claim within six days of death will be catalogued and interred in a mass grave site on a Bronx island.
Funeral directors say other policies described by the medical examiner during a conference call on Tuesday could make it even harder to serve families.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
As coronavirus infections peak in New York City, its morgues are quickly running out of room, exceeding their already vastly expanded capacity.
The city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner quietly posted a significant policy change to its website on Tuesday: Instead of holding some bodies in refrigerated city storage for 30 days until they are claimed by families, the city will now hold them for less than a week.
Starting Tuesday, decedents who are not claimed by a funeral home within that short window will be sent to the Bronx's Hart Island, where a mass graveyard called City Cemetery contains more than 1 million unclaimed bodies — the largest such site in the US...