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Workers wearing hazmat suits have been spotted burying caskets in a mass grave on New York's Hart Island - as the number of burials quadruples amid the coronavirus pandemic and the city's death roll rises to 4,778.  

A dozen contracted laborers were seen digging and burying the caskets - some of which had names carved on them - on Thursday. 

The city has used Hart Island to bury New Yorkers with no known next of kin or whose family are unable to arrange a funeral since the 19th century. 

Typically, about 25 bodies are buried there once a week by low-paid Rikers Island jail inmates. That number began increasing last month as the new coronavirus spread rapidly and New York became the epicenter of the pandemic.