A total 777 people died of the coronavirus in New York yesterday, Governor Andrew Cuomo says.

"We continue to endure great pain … We feel this loss deeply as a state, community and New York family. It is a terrible, heartbreaking loss," he said at a press conference on Friday.

But the Governor said he was "cautiously optimistic" the state's lockdown measures were helping slow the spread of the disease.

"The change in daily ICU (intensive care unit) admissions was a negative number for the first time: -17," he said.

"That means there were fewer people in ICU units statewide yesterday than there were on the previous day."

The update comes as grim footage has emerged of workers in protective suits burying dozens of bodies in mass graves on a small island off New York City.

With morgues running out of space, the city has now shortened the amount of time it will hold unclaimed remains before they are buried in the city’s public cemetery.

Under the new policy, the medical examiner’s office will keep bodies in storage for just 14 days before they’re buried in the city’s potter’s field on Hart Island, a one-mile, limited-access strip off the Bronx that’s the final resting place for more than a million mostly poor New Yorkers.

Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on the island, mostly for people whose families can’t afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives.

But in recent days, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day, a spokesman from the Department of Correction said.

Aerial footage captured by the Associated Press news agency on Thursday showed workers wearing hazmat suits as they dug long trenches and buried dozens of pine caskets.

Before burial, the dead are wrapped in body bags and placed inside the caskets with their name scrawled in large letters on the top.

About 40 caskets could be seen lined up for burial on Thursday, and two fresh trenches had been dug in recent days.

Interments are typically done by inmates from the city’s Rikers Island jail complex, but during the coronavirus pandemic the job has been taken over by contractors.

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