Drone video may show inmates burying coffins on NYC’s infamous Hart Island

Disturbing new drone video shows a crew of city inmates in protective gear burying coffins in a mass grave on Hart Island — where the city says it may bury the mounting dead from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The newly released footage, shot Thursday, shows more than a half-dozen white-clad prisoners lower wooden coffins into the ground, then stand by as a bulldozer and backhoe dump mounds of dirt on at least 20 of the boxes, which are lined up at the end of a long trench.

Burials are a common sight on the island, where the city has used inmates to inter the Big Apple’s anonymous and unclaimed dead for 150 years. But the number of coffins in the video in the midst of the coronavirus plague hanging over the city presents an eerie picture.

Melinda Hunt, director of the Hart Island Project, the nonprofit group that produced the video, said 23 bodies were buried that day.

Hunt says she doesn’t know for sure if they were COVID victims but said there’s an indication there have been more burials recently and the process itself seems to have become more organized and systematic.

“It’s a much more orderly burial operation now than it was even a short time ago,” she told The Post Tuesday. “I think people want to know.”

Officials at City Hall said Tuesday that no coronavirus victims have been buried on Hart Island to date, whether unclaimed or otherwise.

Asked if suspected coronavirus patients had been buried there, a spokesperson said they didn’t believe so, but wouldn’t know for sure since none of the bodies had been diagnosed.

The city’s count of coronavirus deaths is almost certainly inaccurate, becauseit does not test the dead, The Post has reported.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the city may resort to using the infamous burial ground as the city’s death toll surged past 3,000 Tuesday.

New York City correction officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.