Workers in military outfits built a makeshift morgue outside Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan on Tuesday to deal with a potential surge of coronavirus victims, The Post has learned.
Two refrigerated trailers were trucked to the site at 30th Street and the FDR Drive, along with a customized RV labeled “MOBILE COMMAND CENTER — MEDICAL EXAMINER.”
A team of men wearing camouflage fatigues and face masks set up a series of white tents that form a tunnel to a larger, white tent.
Other men wearing jackets that identified them as members of the NYPD and the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were also at the scene.
A source familiar with the operation said that additional refrigerated trailers would be brought to the site and that similar set-ups would be built up outside other hospitals.
“The plan is for them to be there and throughout the city,” the source said.
On Tuesday morning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York’s death toll from the coronavirus had reached 210, and he likened the accelerating spread of the disease to a “bullet train.”
Cuomo also said the state had 25,665 confirmed cases of the contagious illness, with 14,904 — nearly 60 percent — in New York City.
The area outside Bellevue had been surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that was taken down Monday night by workers who used a rotary saw to cut it apart.
The site previously housed a temporary morgue for victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
At that time, it was run by a Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team from the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
nypost.com
