The Chief Medical Officer has warned that the health of the UK population will suffer if there is an increase in deprivation as a result of a prolonged economic downturn.
Professor Chris Whitty told Westminster's Science and Technology Committee about several possible negative impacts on health that Covid-19 could have, one of which included the economic fallout of the pandemic.
He also revealed that it is unlikely more than 10% of the population outside London have developed antibodies to coronavirus.
He said he is not at the point where he feels "confident" that he can give a proportion, but added: "My view at the moment, I would love to be proved wrong, is that it is unlikely that any part of the UK maybe outside London will have a seroprevalence much above 10%.
"So I think it's quite a small proportion of the population... I would be delighted if it was higher than that, that would be very good news."
Antibody tests are not at the stage yet where they are accurate enough to say with enough confidence that someone has or has not had the disease, he said.
But they will improve, he said, adding: "They are good enough for us to get a feel for how many people as a proportion of the population have actually had the infection."
The chief medical officer for England highlighted the risk of deaths caused by other health problems being delayed or not dealt with at an early stage while the NHS battles to deal with the pandemic.
He told MPs: "One of the things that I've tried to say several times in public and I will say again here is that in terms of looking at just the public health, there are four forms of major negative impact on health, just narrowly health that this epidemic is going to have.
"There's direct deaths from people dying of Covid with the NHS working well, there are indirect deaths because the NHS got overwhelmed which it has not due to the fantastic work of the whole of the UK public, as well as the absolutely remarkable work of the NHS, it has not. But that was the second risk of overwhelming the emergency services.
"The third one is the indirect deaths caused by downscaling other health issues and public health issues, elective surgery, where health problems are probably going to come back where people have delayed things or stuff hasn't been picked up or dealt with earlier than it otherwise will now be and this is an indirect effect.
"The final one though, and this is absolutely within the scope of Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), and we've looked at this, is we all know that there is a gradient between health and deprivation and if as a result of economic downturns for prolonged periods, deprivation increases, that will have a health effect."
Professor Whitty also denied that he had continued to advise against locking down until March 24 until such a measure was imposed.
"Well, firstly the answer is no," said Professor Whitty, in response to former health secretary Jeremy Hunt.
"People kind of have again a rather... there's a pre-lockdown state and there's just lockdown.
"Actually, multiple things happened in stages all the way through that month. As Sage advised that different things are brought in, starting with the ones that have got big impacts but almost no negative downsides.
"People may laugh at things like washing hands, actually they work a lot more effectively than many of the other more draconian measures that people can think of.
"But the first of those was individual isolation, followed by household isolation and shielding, then into strong recommendations about people working from home and then onto closing schools, pubs and clubs and so on, and then onto final lockdown."
He added: "I note in the last week that I and my colleagues have been berated by one set of professors in one newspaper for going too late and another professor in another newspaper for doing too much too early, and in reality, we will in due course have to go back and look over this and see exactly what's the best way to do this."
Meanwhile the Office for National Statistics has found that coronavirus and the lockdown is having a different effect on those with disablities.
Almost half (45.1%) of disabled adults, compared with around a third (30.2%) of non-disabled adults, reported being very worried about the effect the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is having on their life. Nearly 9 in 10 disabled adults (86.3%) reported they are very worried or somewhat worried.
Two-thirds of disabled adults report coronavirus-related concerns affecting their well-being.
Disabled adults were significantly more likely than non-disabled adults to report spending too much time alone. Around a third (35%) of disabled adults reported this compared with around a fifth (19.9%) of non-disabled adults.
But while they might be finding the situation harder it hasn't stopped them helping others.
Disabled adults are as active in supporting their communities as non-disabled adults; in the past seven days, a similar proportion of disabled (64.9%) and non-disabled adults (63.1%) said they had checked on neighbours who might need help at least once.
