Refrigerated trucks functioning as temporary morgues at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo: Getty Images)

New York, November 24 (RHC)-- The bodies of nearly 700 people who died in New York City during the COVID-19 surge in the spring are still stored in freezer trucks, U.S. media reports say.  Most of the bodies are of people whose families can’t afford a proper burial or can’t be located.

When officials have successfully contacted relatives, the bodies have remained in the freezer trucks at a disaster morgue due to financial reasons, The Wall Street Journal said.

The makeshift morgues were created in April, when New York City was contending with the coronavirus that shut down the metropolitan as virus cases and deaths spiked.  On April 1st alone, New York City recorded more than 83,000 infections and 1,941 deaths.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio said in April that mass burials wouldn’t take place following reports that New York City was considering the use of temporary graves.  A NYC forensic-investigations department spokesman said it wasn't equipped to deal with the surge in deaths that came during the spring coronavirus pandemic as it was built to manage around 20 deaths a day.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic's peak saw the unit inundated with as many as 200 new cases each day.  A medical examiner's office spokesperson said Backlogged cases resulted on some families going weeks or months without knowing a loved one died.

A New Yorker woman told Wall Street Journal she learned about the death of her husband nearly three months after he died of the coronavirus.  In April, footage emerged of workers burying dozens of bodies in a mass grave in New York as the number of fatalities from the coronavirus grew rapidly.

The mayor had claimed in April that mass burials wouldn’t take place following reports that New York City was considering the use of temporary graves.