The city’s coronavirus death toll soared past 3,500 Tuesday, passing a grim benchmark that New Yorkers hoped would go forever unequaled: the lives lost in the 9/11 terror attacks.

The COVID-19 strain has now claimed 3,544 Big Apple residents, more than the 2,977 snuffed out nationwide on New York’s darkest day.

“I never thought I’d see this many people die in New York again. Absolutely not,” said Tom Von Essen, the FDNY Commissioner on September 11, and now the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency region including the city.

“Like 9/11, everyone knows someone who is dying,” Von Essen told The Post.

At 5 p.m. Monday, the city tallied 2,738 deaths. Within 24 hours, another 806 had been lost.

“Each passing day brings more tragedy and this is one of the hardest yet,” said Mayor de Blasio in a statement. “My heart goes out to everyone who has lost someone during this ongoing battle.”

Unthinkable as the toll is, it may discount dozens — if not hundreds — of New Yorkers who died in their homes, untested and omitted from official tallies.

A Post review of NYPD records found 80 death investigations opened between March 22 and Tuesday in which the deceased displayed coronavirus symptoms.

None of those patients, though, was included in the count of New Yorkers claimed by the contagion because they weren’t tested before dying.

And those are only calls to which the short-staffed NYPD responded.

City paramedics, meanwhile, are fielding hundreds of additional calls every day for cardiac arrest patients — many of them exhibiting telltale signs of coronavirus — with an unthinkable mortality rate.

“Out of the 12 [cardiac cases] I did on Sunday, 10 had COVID symptoms,” said responder Anthony Almojera. “Nobody made it back.”

The FDNY confirmed that paramedics are seeing more than 300 cardiac-arrest calls daily, with “well over” 200 dying.

On a typical day, paramedics would deal with around two dozen deaths on approximately 54 to 74 cardiac-arrest calls.

“Obviously not all are COVID, but they aren’t being tested,” said Almojera, vice president of FDNY/EMS union Local 3621.

A mayoral spokeswoman said that the city medical examiner and Health Department were “working together to include into their reports deaths that may be linked to COVID but [are] not lab-confirmed.”

Even if the count is corrected, however, responders will still face the demoralizing deluge.

“We deal with death, but not on this level,” said Almojera.

The Empire State passed a heartbreaking milestone of its own on Tuesday, with 731 newly reported fatalities, smashing the previous single-day record of 630, as the overall total hit 5,489.

The surge upended two relatively flat days — 594 deaths Sunday and 599 Monday — that had led Gov. Cuomo to believe that New York might be entering the apex and leveling out.

“Behind every one of those numbers is an individual,” said Cuomo in his daily Albany press briefing. “Is a mother, is a father, is a sister, is a brother.”

The state now has 138,836 confirmed cases, with 74,601 of those diagnoses in the five boroughs.

Further linking the tragedies, Cuomo said that the state may extend line-of-duty death benefits like those afforded kin of 9/11 heroes to the families of those lost fighting the coronavirus.

“I think it’s an important thing to look at,” said Cuomo.

“They know what they’re exposing themselves to, and they still do it.”

– Additional reporting by Bernadette Hogan and Aaron Feis