New York City has long used Hart Island, a small island off the Bronx, as potter’s field.  It’s been a burial ground for those whose families couldn’t afford funerals or for those with no known next of kin.

It’s now being used to bury a growing number of New York’s coronavirus victims.

Reuters reports:

“New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter’s field on Hart Island as the city’s daily death rate from the coronavirus epidemic has reached grim new records in each of the last three days.

“Typically, some 25 bodies are interred each week by low-paid jail inmates working on the island, which sits off the east shore of the city’s Bronx borough and is accessible only by boat. That number began increasing in March as the new coronavirus spread rapidly, making New York the epicenter of the global pandemic.”