New York dead are buried in mass grave
Burial ground for victims of 1919 Spanish Flu and Aids reopens as city traces outbreak source to Europe
Prisoners in New York wearing hazmat suits have been seen burying the dead in makeshift mass graves. Around 45 wooden caskets – some with names carved into them – appeared to be lowered into freshly dug trenches on Hart Island yesterday. The caskets were lifted out of refrigerated lorries by inmates from nearby Rikers Island jail. Bill de Blasio, New York’s mayor, has not confirmed whether burials for coronavirus victims had been or would take place there.
PRISONERS in New York wearing hazmat suits have been seen burying the dead in makeshift mass graves on Hart Island, as it emerged yesterday that travellers from the UK and Europe probably brought the virus to the city.
Around 45 wooden caskets – some of which had names carved into them – appeared to be lowered into freshly dug trenches yesterday.
The caskets, which bore names including “Abraham” and “Rogers”, were pictured being lifted out of refrigerated lorries by inmates from nearby Rikers Island jail.
Bill de Blasio, New York’s mayor, has not confirmed whether burials for coronavirus victims had been or would take place there but indicated this week the city might resort to using the island for temporary burials during the pandemic.
The island was used as a burial ground for victims of the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic and the thousands of people who died of Aids in the Eighties.
Normally, about 25 bodies are buried each Thursday on Hart Island, but the number has trebled in recent weeks, according to the Department of Corrections, the agency overseeing burials on the island.
Mark Levine, head of New York City Council Health Committee, also said earlier this week that New York City was planning to start “temporarily burying” coronavirus victims in trenches in a public park.
“The goal is to avoid scenes like those in Italy, where the military was forced to collect bodies from churches and even off the streets,” he said. “It will be done in a dignified, orderly – and temporary – manner. But it will be tough for New Yorkers to take.”
The city has already turned part of Central Park into a tented makeshift overflow hospital for Mount Sinai. Hospitals have been using refrigerated trucks after morgues filled up.
New York State has recorded nearly 150,000 cases and 6,300 deaths, giving it one of the highest subnational totals in the world.
The daily death toll in the US hit a record of 1,937 on Wednesday and is expected to keep rising as people who entered the hospital 10 days or several weeks ago fail to recover or come off ventilators – but the rate of hospitalisation and ICU admissions is decreasing, which suggests the peak may have arrived.
There have now been a total of 14,831 deaths and 435,553 confirmed cases across the US as the outbreak rockets toward its projected peak on Sunday.
New research suggests that one of the first strains of coronavirus to hit New York came from the UK. A study found that an early case of the virus in the city was in all likelihood indirectly transmitted by someone who brought it across from Britain.
Geneticists who have traced the initial spread of coronavirus in New York have discovered that the strains of the virus were “practically identical” to those already spreading through Europe.
But while President Donald Trump barred foreign nationals at the end of January from entering the US if they had been in China, it was not until midmarch that similar restrictions were placed on those from most European countries.
Researchers now suggest that by this point travellers had already been returning to New York with coronavirus from countries such as Britain, Italy, France, Austria and the Netherlands.
In one example, researchers at the Grossman School of Medicine traced the case of a Long Island resident with no travel history who tested positive for Covid-19 early in March.
The US initially limited testing only to those who had come from China in the two weeks before Jan 31 and displayed symptoms of Covid-19.
The research came as it emerged that a prison in Chicago that has become America’s top coronavirus hotspot is providing inmates “insufficient” travel-size soap after they were found using normal bars as weapons to beat one another.
Chicago Cook County jail has recorded 350 coronavirus infections, making it the largest known source of the disease in the country.
An employee at the jail said that after inmates put soap bars in socks to carry out beatings, each prisoner now had
three-packs of travel-size soap. But they said this made it impossible for inmates to practise good hygiene.
One former inmate at Chicago Cook County Jail told CBS News that until recently only one additional bar was provided to a communal bathroom. “I know soap is used to kill the virus, but when 48 people are using the same bar at a time like this, that should raise some eyebrows,” he said.
In a statement, the sheriff ’s office said allegations that inmates and staff were receiving inadequate cleaning supplies and soap were false and that alcohol-based hand sanitiser, normally considered contraband, had been declassified.
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said yesterday that it was possible that Americans could still enjoy a summer holiday at the beach, watch baseball and attend weddings provided sufficient safeguards were in place for a potential resurgence of the disease.
Dr Fauci, a White House coronavirus expert, said he hoped April 30 would be when the country could start to look at gradually getting back to normal.