Kings County leads country in coronavirus deaths
Brooklyn has now become the borough with the most COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, deaths in New York City, even while Queens has the most cases.
As of today, the New York State Department of Health reported that there have been 46,387 confirmed COVID cases in Queens, along with 3,601 deaths, and Brooklyn had 40,658 cases and 3,639 deaths.
This makes Kings County the deadliest county in the entire country when it comes to coronavirus. In fact, Brooklyn is home to one-fourth of all of the state’s COVID deaths — and 7% of the entire country’s coronavirus deaths.
These death tolls might not be entirely accurate, though, because the state’s health department doesn’t include probable coronavirus deaths in its count, meaning the real numbers could be even higher.
The city’s Department of Health, however, does include probable COVID deaths, reporting that Brooklyn has had 4,344 deaths and Queens has had 4,274 deaths as of earlier today.
According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, Brooklyn and Queens are the top two countries in the country when it comes to most coronavirus cases. In this ranking, nine out of the top 11 counties are located in either New York or New Jersey.
Queens is the county hardest hit, followed by Kings County, Bronx County, Nassau County, Wayne County in Detroit, New York County, Cook County in Chicago, Suffolk County, Essex County, Bergen County and Westchester County.
Read more about this in this article: NBC New York
Queens falls behind in census self-response during coronavirus pandemic
Queens, and the rest of New York City, lags far behind the national average for 2020 Census completion amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to data released by the Census Bureau on April 23.
Self-response is when someone fills out the census for their own household, either by phone, internet or mail, rather than having an enumerator fill the form out for them. The Census Bureau promotes self responding as the best option.
The city has a census self-response rate of 45.8% compared to the national average of 51.6%. In Queens in particular, the self-response rate is very low.
Corona, the zip code that is the absolute hardest hit in the city and borough, has a census self-response rate of just 24.5%.
“Right now their house is on fire,” Chuck Park, Civic Participation Manager at MinKwon Center for Community Action in Flushing, said. “They are not thinking about investing in fire trucks and stations for the future to prevent it. They are thinking about putting out that fire as soon as possible.”
Read more about this in this article: Documented New York
“A meaningful place in a dark time”: Hart Island during coronavirus
When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a few weeks back that the city would begin burying unclaimed coronavirus-related deaths on Hart Island’s infamous potter’s field, New Yorkers didn’t know what to expect this to look like.
Now, just a couple weeks later, the city has already begun conducting these mass unmarked burials on the small island right off the coast of the Bronx.
“There will be no mass burials on Hart Island,” de Blasio wrote in a Tweet. “Everything will be individual and everybody will be treated with dignity.”
Drone footage of workers stacking simple wooden coffins in a grid in a large pit of earth have been released by nonprofit Hart Island Project. People do not get headstones.
The island, these days home to not much else other than the nation’s largest potter’s field, was first bought in 1868 and has served as a Union Civil War prison camp, a mental institution, tuberculosis and yellow fever sanatorium, a homeless shelter, a boys’ reformatory, a jail and a drug rehabilitation center.
Up until 2019, the island and burial site was managed by the New York City Department of Corrections — which would pay inmates $40 a week to bury 11-22 people a day. Now, it is being handled by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.
The city is using Hart Island to bury decedents who died of coronavirus and have not been claimed by a loved one within 14 days of their death.
If a corpse is claimed by a friend or family member, they will be able to arrange a funeral or burial for their deceased and won’t have to worry about the person ending up on Hart Island.
“The heartbreaking numbers of deaths we’re seeing means we are sadly losing more people without family or friends to bury them privately,” de Blasio tweeted. “Those are the people who will be buried on Hart Island, with every measure of respect and dignity New York City can provide.”
Read more about this in this article: CNN
