Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, on the Ridgewood/Bushwick border in Brooklyn, registered the first coronavirus-related death in New York City back on March 14.
Since that time, more than 2,200 New Yorkers — most of them senior citizens aged 65 and older — have perished from the illness as the pandemic spread throughout the city. Wyckoff Heights and other hospitals across the city have become overwhelmed with critically ill coronavirus patients filling intensive care wards and, at this point, any other available space in each medical center.
As the losses from coronavirus cases mounted, the city dispatched empty refrigerated trailers to hospitals across the five boroughs. These trailers have become a public reminder of the grim reality New York City faces; the death toll from coronavirus is so great that the trailers must serve as temporary morgues because the hospital morgues are at their capacity.
For days, the makeshift morgue for Wyckoff Heights has been parked along Stanhope Street — and residents have witnessed the tragic sight of medical workers, clad in protective gear, wheeling the bodies of coronavirus victims up a wooden ramp and into the trailer.
A Reuters photographer obtained images of the horrific scene on April 4. (WARNING: Graphic imagery, reader discretion is advised.)
