What is it like living opposite a morgue in New York in the midst of a pandemic

Alix, 28, and her fiancé, Mark Kozlow, 33, live in New York's trendy Bushwick neighborhood. From the window of their one-room apartment, one can see the morgue courtyard, where the victims of the coronavirus are delivered. About how a couple lives in the midst of a pandemic, it is stated in the video of the publication "Voice of America".

“We see it with our own eyes”

“I don’t think it’s as traumatic as it is for people on the front lines,” Alix says. According to her, this does not bother them in any way. “We understand that this is terrible,” she added.

When the second truck with the bodies was delivered, the director of the morgue came to the young people and asked if he could do something for them. “They made every effort to hide it (bodies. - Ed.), - noted Alix. - But we have the third floor. Therefore, there is no way to help us, we have a bird's-eye view. "

She believes that what is happening today is just the beginning. “Racks are being built before our eyes to store bodies inside trucks, because more and more space is needed,” she said.

She estimates that one truck can hold about 100 bodies. “We see it all with our own eyes. We see how serious this is all, ”the girl commented. All this chaos takes place right in front of her house. Alix noted that it was difficult for her to imagine what was going on inside the morgue. “We stopped counting how many bodies we brought in,” she summed up.

Lack of storage space for victims Covid

Due to the fact that the number of coronavirus victims is growing in New York, therefore, the space inside the morgues for storing their bodies is decreasing, the city has reduced the time during which it will store unidentified corpses before they are interred in the city public cemetery. This publication reports Fox News.

Under the new policy, the forensic office will store the bodies in a warehouse just 14 days before burial on Hart Island. Usually about 25 bodies are buried there per week, mainly those whose families cannot afford to organize a burial or who do not have relatives. But recently, the number of burials here has increased to about 24 per day, said Jason Kersten, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

On April 9, workers in protective suits were spotted on the island. A dozen hired workers were digging pits and dropping coffins into them, some of which had carved names.

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On April 9, officials said they had no choice but to bury the victims of COVID-19 in the city cemetery, since it was a growing number of deaths due to coronavirus and a shrinking space in morgues.

On the same day, April 9, about 40 burial pits were dug on the island, and in recent days - two more fresh trenches. Usually, prisoners from Rikers Island are brought in to dig graves on Hart Island. But in connection with the outbreak of the epidemic, the Department of Corrections began to hire people to do this on a contract basis.

This week, the virus kills hundreds of New Yorkers every day. Hospitals are crowded, where the bodies are placed in refrigerators parked at the door.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week that officials are considering temporarily burying coronavirus victims on Hart Island if morgues and temporary storage facilities are full.

Recall that in New York they decided to prepare mass burial sites for coronavirus victims amid a large number of deaths due to COVID-19. Hart Island was chosen for these purposes.

Since the 1980th century, Hart Island has been used to bury New Yorkers who have no close relatives. Located in Long Island Strait off the southeast coast of the Bronx, Desert Spit is the country's largest public cemetery with a bleak history. Previously, there was a prison camp during the Civil War, there was a colony for tuberculosis patients, and in the XNUMXs this place served as a shelter for thousands of HIV / AIDS victims who were abandoned by families or could not get a proper burial.