Burials at New York City’s Hart Island potter’s field began outnumbering expected deaths in early March 2020, coinciding with COVID-19 pandemic onset, peaking five weeks later with 22 deaths for each death during the same week in 2019, investigators from the City University of New York Institute for Demographic Research report.

The study, published yesterday in Scientific Reports, suggests that the pandemic greatly magnified inequalities and highlights the particularly devastating effects of COVID-19 on economically and socially vulnerable groups, the authors said.

The team searched adult burial records from Hart Island and daily death data from the city’s health statistics bureau to estimate unclaimed deaths over time and by borough from March to August 2020 relative to pre-pandemic levels. 

More than 1 million people are buried at the Hart Island potter’s field, a public cemetery for deceased indigent, unknown, or unclaimed people.

“Communities of color and the poor were disproportionately impacted through disrupted social networks—another consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and a marker of poor health and premature death—and this may have further compounded who got sick and received treatment or care,” the authors wrote.

Poorest borough had nearly a third of deaths

From 2015 to 2020, 6,683 people were interred on Hart Island, including 2,520 in 2020, compared with 862 and 939 in 2018 and 2019, respectively. An estimated 10% of excess COVID-19 deaths were unclaimed. 

Communities of color and the poor were disproportionately impacted through disrupted social networks—another consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and a marker of poor health and premature death—and this may have further compounded who got sick and received treatment or care.

In 2020, 31.5% of all unclaimed deaths occurred in the Bronx. “This is consistent with the hypothesis that economic vulnerability plays a key role in becoming an unclaimed death,” the researchers wrote.

The share of male unclaimed deaths was slightly higher or the same as in 2020 than in previous years (73.7% in 2020 vs 73.3% in 2019 and 73.7% in 2018), as was the average age at death (69.0 years in 2020 vs 67.6 in 2019 and 68.4 in 2018).

Establishing timely, automatic emergency burial assistance during disasters could decrease this burden and shorten the administrative lag that disproportionately affects poor and immigrant households, the authors said.

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