A two-week school shutdown may be needed to "get on top of" spiralling coronavirus cases, according to a Government adviser.
Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, believes there is "very little way" of controlling the second wave, without a "circuit breaker".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the Government's three-tier lockdown system was just "biting around the edges".
The scientist said the Government may have to remove children from school for two weeks to allow coronavirus rates to "calm down".
"I can see very little way of getting on top of this without some kind of a circuit-breaker because the numbers are actually pretty eye-watering in some bits of the country," he told Today.
"I think it's going to be very hard to get on top of this just biting around the edges."
He told the BBC that universities are struggling to contain the virus, with up to 70 per cent of students in quarantine at some institutions.
The immunologist said this was 'not a good place to be' and warned schools may have to shut, despite 'every effort' to keep them open, the Telegraph reports.
Sir John added: "So if in the end we have to take kids out for two weeks, calm it all down, and then start again, ideally embedded in a much more rigorous testing regime, than that's maybe what we will have to do."
His comments come after the NEU, Britain's largest teachers' union, called for an extended two-week half term to cut infections.
