Police discovered several dozen decomposing bodies in two rental trucks parked in Brooklyn after residents called them complaining about a foul odour coming from the vehicles, The New York Times reported.
It remains unclear how many of the people found stacked in plastic body bags inside the trucks at the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home had died from the coronavirus, the authorities noted.
The chilling find came as cemeteries and morgues in the city, the world’s worst-hit by the coronavirus, have in recent weeks been under egregious strain.
The mere fact that dead New Yorkers could be left to decay in broad daylight in rental vehicles on a crowded street in downtown New York apparently underscores the challenges facing the city, which has already seen as many as 14,000 killed by COVID-19 - one of the worst death tallies in the world, the US edition remarks.
One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the funeral home had been storing bodies in the trucks after its freezer stopped working properly.
An investigation is currently being carried out to see whether the conditions for safe body storage had been met by the funeral director.
Per fresh Johns Hopkins estimates, the US has witnessed well over one million coronavirus cases as of 29 April, including over 61,100 related deaths. New York retains the first spot in terms of both the number of those infected and the overall death toll.