New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter’s field on Hart Island.<br />The decision was made as the city’s daily death rate from the coronavirus pandemic continues to soar.<br />Historically Hart Island has been used to bury those with no known next of kin or for those unable to afford an alternative.<br />The island sits to the east off the city’s Bronx borough and is accessible only by boat.<br />Typically, some 25 deceased New Yorkers are interred each week by jail inmates working on the island.<br />Now, according to Reuters, five days a week, about two dozen bodies are buried a day on the island.<br />There are over 161,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York and the state reports a death toll of more than 7,000.
