Retrieving bodies from homes is a 24-hour operation in N.Y.C.

Nearly 120 morgue workers and soldiers are working around the clock to retrieve the bodies of up to 280 people a day who are dying at home in New York City, many of them probably having succumbed to the coronavirus without being counted in the official death toll.

The chief medical examiner’s office is overseeing the grisly task, with the help of more than 100 soldiers from the U.S. Army, the National Guard and the Air National Guard, officials said. Many of those involved in the operation have special training in processing human remains.

Fifteen four-person teams are working during each 12-hour shift, driving mostly rented vans, said Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office.

Fire Department data shows that 1,125 patients were pronounced dead in their homes or on the street in the first five days of April, more than eight times the 131 deaths recorded during the same period last year.

Paramedics are not testing those they pronounce dead for the virus so it is almost impossible to say how many of the people were infected with it. Some may have been tested before they died and either were not admitted to hospitals or were sent home.

But the discrepancy between the number of people dying at home this year at the height of the epidemic compared with the number of those who died under such circumstances last year suggests the virus was involved in many of the recent deaths.

“The driver of this huge uptick in deaths at home is Covid-19,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday. “And some people are dying directly of it, and some people are dying indirectly of it, but it is the tragic ‘X’ factor here.”