BODIES are being stored at a council gritting yard as hospital mortuaries reach full capacity.
The refrigeration unit, tucked away in a corner of the site, is under 24-hour guard.
Hospital vehicles were seen delivering and collecting the dead from the nearest hospital, which is a 15-minute drive away in Salisbury, Wilts.
Two other units have been set up at Royal Liverpool Hospital.
Temporary morgues — typically inside 40ft shipping containers and each holding about 35 bodies — were last seen during the height of the pandemic, when there were at least 1,000 deaths a day.
Although not at that rate, bleak figures showed Christmas week was the deadliest in England and Wales for almost two years.
There were more than 1,600 deaths above the norm as the cold weather, surging flu infections and long waits for ambulances and in A&E combined to raise mortality rates by a fifth.
It was the third week running when there were more than 1,000 excess deaths in England and Wales.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine claimed the spike in deaths was undoubtedly linked to record delays for urgent care.
It said: “If you can’t get an ambulance to someone who’s having a heart attack or a stroke, then some of those patients may die as a result.”
