EXTRA mortuaries are not needed in Berkshire even though the Covid-19 death toll continues to rise, a public health expert claims.

Temporary mortuaries have been set up in several areas of the South East, including Surrey, London and Kent, because hospitals have run out of space to store bodies during the second wave of the pandemic.

But Meradin Peachey, director at Public Health Berkshire, said “we don’t need additional mortuary capacity”, when she spoke at a meeting of West Berkshire Council’s Outbreak Control Board on January 18.

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“There are minimal excess deaths across the whole of Berkshire, which was very different in the first wave," she said.

"We don’t need extra mortuary capacity.”

When calculating the number of excess deaths, Public Health England uses mortality data from the previous five years to determine how many deaths were expected a certain period and then looks at how many deaths actually occurred.

The latest Public Health England figures show there were 920 excess deaths in Berkshire between March 20 and December 4.

Hospitals in the county have seen a surge in Covid-19 admissions since the second national lockdown was lifted on December 2 and Royal Berkshire Hospital, which is now treating more than 230 patients for the virus, has created additional capacity in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Royal Berkshire Hospital NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, has recorded 61 Covid-19 deaths since January 1 and 359 overall, according to the latest NHS data.

A spokeswoman for the trust said: “The Royal Berkshire Hospital mortuary is managing the current situation well and has no need to use external resources."

The latest figures show that by January 1 in 2021, Berkshire had recorded a total of 1,058 Covid-19 related deaths.