NEW YORK (CNN Newsource) — More unclaimed bodies in New York will be laid to rest on Hart Island.

The cemetery has been used for years as the burial ground for people who had no family come forward to claim them.

And now it will be used for covid-19 victims in the same situation.

New York city leaders say only bodies that haven't been claimed after a couple of weeks will be buried -- and they were doing so to help open up space in morgues for more dead people.

Usually bodies are kept in the morgue for up to two months before being buried -- but now -- the city will move unclaimed bodies to Hart Island after two weeks.

More than a million people are interred in the cemetery.

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