According to the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), many of the bodies are people whose families cannot be located or who could not afford to bury their relatives, the newspaper said on Sunday.
Dina Maniotis, executive deputy commissioner for the OCME, who oversaw the unit’s pandemic response, told the Wall Street Journal that the city was disposing of the remains, albeit slowly.
An OCME spokesperson told the newspaper that an emergency disaster morgue set up in April on the 39th Street Pier in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood would remain open until at least the coronavirus pandemic is declared over.
The United States has over 256,700 coronavirus deaths registered, the highest COVID-19 death toll in the world. The state of New York alone has confirmed over 34,300 deaths from COVID-19.
