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HORRIFYING pictures of a morgue set up at London’s new covid hospital emerged yesterday — a warning to sunseekers flouting the lockdown.
Trucks have been hired to bring up to 40 coronavirus victims at a time to the makeshift facility at NHS Nightingale in the Docklands.
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The bodies will then be stacked on shelving inside container units with the temperature set below 4C to preserve them while funerals are hastily arranged, sources say.
The grim pictures came as thousands ignored warnings to stay indoors — including those spotted queuing for ice creams in Brighton yesterday.
One source at the mortuary said: “I’ve seen ten trucks arriving one after the other.
“Their containers are for the bodies of those of us that don’t make it. And the trucks just keep on coming.
“Our advice to everyone is, ‘Stay at home and don’t end up in here’.”
NHS Nightingale was built in just nine days in a stirring response to the pandemic crisis.
Soldiers, medics and engineers came together to turn the ExCeL conference centre into a huge hospital even as the number of deaths rocketed.
The Sun can reveal that the site’s ICC Capital Hall on the ground floor has been turned into a 24-hour mortuary.
The vast space has a 33ft high ceiling and usually costs £25,000 a day to hire for swanky award ceremonies and dinners, with space for up to 5,000 people.
A source said: “This is the most bleak place in Britain.
“Upstairs, doctors and nurses are working frantically around the clock saving lives.
“Down here in the dark gloom, there is just eerie quiet.
“The trucks began arriving on Wednesday.
“Refrigerated containers are lifted off the lorries and the coffins counted.
“This is the reality of what we are dealing with — row after row of bodies.
“The wider public needs to wake up to the brutal reality of what is going on.
“Perhaps people larking around in public parks and buying ice creams rather than staying at home should have a good look.
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Victims will be sent to the makeshift mortuary from NHS Nightingale itself as well as hospitals across the South East.
An NHS spokesman said: “Any patient who dies at a Nightingale Hospital in London will be treated with the same care and respect that they would receive at other NHS hospitals.
“Everyone can ease the burden on staff working at the Nightingale and other NHS hospitals by playing their part in stopping the spread of the virus and staying home to save lives.”
Another temporary mortuary the size of two football pitches is being built at Wanstead Flats in East London.
It will be used as a holding facility before cremations and burials go ahead and victims’ relatives would not be allowed to visit.
The Sun told last month that the Government had secretly sent 200 pop-up mortuaries to locations around the country.
Councils were told of an extra 15,000-body capacity to help manage peaks in demand.
Whitehall officials told of plans for “mobile modular buildings with internal racking” and built-in refrigeration units, which have now been transported to NHS mortuary sites.
The Nightingale in Docklands was formally opened by the Prince of Wales, who spoke via a video link from Balmoral.
It needs an army of up to 16,000 staff in clinical and other roles to keep it running.
Split into more than 80 wards containing 42 beds each, the facility is used to treat Covid-19 patients who have been transferred from other intensive care units across London.
The first coronavirus patients arrived at the Nightingale on Tuesday night.
A major 460-bed Nightingale emergency coronavirus hospital for north east England is to be built in Washington, Tyne and Wear.
The 16-ward facility will be at the town’s International Advanced Manufacturing Park in a unit bigger than a football pitch.
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