TORONTO -- *WARNING: Disturbing content.*
Disturbing online video footage from New York City appears to show a truck waiting outside a Brooklyn hospital for bodies.
The video, which was streamed on Facebook on Sunday, shows a forklift loading something into the back of a truck.
The man who recorded the video, John Lee, says it’s a body. “Please stay inside, this is for real,” Lee says, as he records the video from outside the Brooklyn Hospital Center.
Storyful, a news verification agency, was not able to confirm that it was a body, but was able to confirm the date and location where the video was taken.
According to The New York Times, refrigerated trucks have been stationed outside several city hospitals to hold the bodies of the dead.
In Central Park, an emergency field hospital was erected over the weekend in anticipation of a surge in coronavirus cases. Tents were set up in coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the city. The hospital will hold 68 beds, and is designed to serve as a respiratory care unit. City officials said the hospital will be set to receive patients on March 31.
A Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds arrived in New York City on Monday to also help relieve the pressure on local hospitals.
New York City has become the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. As of of March 30, the city has recorded 36,221 cases and 790 deaths.
