Science
Medical workers wearing personal protective equipment wheel bodies to a refrigerated trailer serving as a makeshift morgue at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on Monday, April 6, 2020, in New York City.
- The new coronavirus is killing thousands of people worldwide each day; more than 115,000 have died worldwide since December.
- Countries hardest hit by the pandemic - like Italy, Spain, the US, and Iran - have had to contend with daily death counts in the hundreds.
- Not all coronavirus victims' bodies are claimed by loved ones, leaving governments and states to bury them at mass grave sites.
- In New York City, officials move unclaimed bodies to an island in the Bronx named City Cemetery, where more than 1 million people are already buried.
- Sobering photos from the ground, drones, and even space show how countries are dealing with their dead.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
As the coronavirus pandemic wears on, countries around the world continue to endure a slow-moving disaster.
COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, is known to have killed more than 115,000 people from around the globe since it December 2019. In the hardest-hit nations, the outbreak has forced officials to make tough decisions regarding the storage, disposal, and burial of the dead left in its wake.
Italy and Spain have experienced the highest single-day death tolls of the entire pandemic. New York state - the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the US - has more cases than any other country in the world (aside from the US itself), and 9,380 deaths.
Morgues and cemeteries are running out of room in some regions, and the bodies of some coronavirus victims either remain unidentified or unclaimed by family members. Traditional funerals have all but been eliminated for fear of spreading the illness, forcing mourners to grieve at a distance.
This week, for example, New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner instituted a new policy stating that if families don't a relative's body within 14 days of death, it will be catalogued and interred in a mass grave site on a Bronx island. In March, the city of Qom, Iran expanded burial pits for people who died from the coronavirus so much that its efforts could be seen from space.
Here's how countries are dealing with an influx of the dead.
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