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New York City considers mass grave in park for virus victims

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Alan Feuer and Liam Stack, The New York Times

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="https://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2020/tnyt/04/07/ny-virus-burial.jpg"/><figcaption>A temporary morgue set up outside the office of the chief medical examiner in New York on April 4, 2020. Confronting the prospect that deaths from the coronavirus outbreak may soon start to strain the capacity of morgues in the city, a high-ranking elected official said on Monday, APril 6, 2020, that the city has started laying plans for a chilling contingency: temporarily burying the dead in one of the city’s public parks. <em>Jonah Markowitz, The New York Times</em></figcaption></figure></div><p>NEW YORK — New York City officials are starting to lay contingency plans if deaths from the coronavirus outbreak begin to overwhelm the capacity of morgues: temporarily burying the dead on public land.</p><p>Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the city would consider temporary burials if the deaths from the coronavirus outbreak exceed the space available in city and hospital morgues, but it had not reached that point.</p><p>“It’s going to be very tough but we have the capacity,” the mayor said at a news conference at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.</p><p>“If we need to do temporary burials to be able to tide us over to pass the crisis, and then work with each family on their appropriate arrangements, we have the ability to do that,” he said, adding, “We may well be dealing with temporary burials so we can deal with each family later.”</p><p>Earlier Monday, the chairman of the City Council health committee, Mark Levine, had sparked an uproar among city residents when he said on Twitter the that the office of the chief medical examiner was looking into creating temporary mass graves in a public park.</p><p>The mayor firmly denied there were plans to use a park as a temporary grave site.</p><p>The city medical examiner’s office said in a statement that no final decision on using temporary burials had been made and the morgues still had “adequate capacity at this time.”</p><p>Gov. Andrew Cuomo also said Monday that he had heard nothing about the possibility of burying people temporarily in parks. “I have heard a lot of wild rumors but I have not heard anything about the city burying people in parks,” the governor said at his daily briefing.</p><p>In recent days, the virus has tripled the number of people dying in the city compared with an average day.</p><p>Not only are hundreds of people dying in hospitals, the number dying at home is exploding, said Aja Worthy Davis, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. Before the pandemic, she said, at-home deaths ranged between 20 and 25 a day. Now they average around 200, she said.</p><div> </div><div><strong>© 2020 The New York Times Company</strong></div>

<p>NEW YORK — New York City officials are starting to lay contingency plans if deaths from the coronavirus outbreak begin to overwhelm the capacity of morgues: temporarily burying the dead on public land.</p><p> </p>

NEW YORK — New York City officials are starting to lay contingency plans if deaths from the coronavirus outbreak begin to overwhelm the capacity of morgues: temporarily burying the dead on public land.

New York City considers mass grave in park for virus victims

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New York City considers mass grave in park for virus victims

Alan Feuer and Liam Stack,

The New York Times

Published Apr 07, 2020 07:11 AM PHT

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new york city

new york

covid-19

coronavirus

Bill de Blasio

rooklyn Navy Yard

mass grave

Mark Levine

pandemic

andrew cuomo

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