Hundreds of bodies of people who died from the coronavirus in New York city during the spring spike are still stored in freezer trucks due to an overflow in hospital morgues, funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories. 

The Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that there are about 650 bodies being stored in the trucks at a disaster morgue that was set up in April on the 39th Street Pier in Sunset Park. 

According to the city's Office of Chief Medical Examiner, many of the unclaimed bodies are of people whose family can't be located or can't afford a proper burial.

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said in a statement received by CBS2 that "supporting families and helping facilitate respectful final arrangements for individuals who passed at the height of the pandemic" is an important mission of the office. 

The medical examiner's office has a task force assigned to identify bodies and another team to track down next of kin. Yet they're struggling to find the families of some 230 people.

Some other families can't afford a decent burial for their loved ones. They can choose to bury them for free in Hart Land, which was used to bury people during the flu epidemic in 1918.

In April, ABC News reported about 100 bodies were stored in the vehicles after the owner of the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Services funeral home in Brooklyn said the freezer that normally stores bodies stopped working.

The bodies were found after neighbors reported an odor coming from the trucks, New York media reported. 

The news revealed just how hard the city was hit by the pandemic. 

Joe Aievoli, whose family owns six funeral homes, said no one, including himself, was prepared for the COVID-19 death toll.

"I rented several refrigerated trailers," Aievoli told CBS2. "Even though we had someone in our custody, it would sometimes take three or four weeks before we can have availability at a cemetery or a crematory."

Now the city is carefully bracing a second wave. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he is reopening an emergency COVID-19 field hospital on Staten Island, the first such facility in the state to relaunch since the state partly tamed the pandemic over the summer. New York state has averaged nearly 5,500 new cases per day over the past seven days.

The temporary hospital cared for 200 patients last spring, when New York City's hospital wards were overwhelmed with seriously ill and dying patients. Now, Cuomo said, officials are concerned it might be needed again, as the virus has spread in the borough at a faster rate than in the rest of the city. Staten Island has averaged 209 new cases of COVID-19 per day over the past seven days – up 86 percent from two weeks ago.

The city now has recorded 301,282 COVID-19 cases, and more than 24,218 deaths according to the John Hopkins University.