The UK's coronavirus death toll could have been halved if lockdown had been ordered a week earlier, according to a former government adviser.
Prof Neil Ferguson, who has been credited as the architect of the country's lockdown, claimed that the delay in introducing lockdown has cost thousands of lives.
The professor, who sat on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) before he resigned after breaching lockdown rules to meet his lover, estimated in March that coronavirus deaths would be unlikely to exceed 20,000 in the UK.
However, official figures reveal that the UK's coronavirus death toll is now the worst in Europe, at over 40,000 - more than double what was originally estimated.
He told the Commons science and technology committee: “We knew the epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced.
“So had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half.”
“Whilst I think the measures, given what we knew about this virus then, in terms of its transmission, were warranted, I’m second guessing at this point, certainly had we introduced them earlier we would have seen many fewer deaths" he added.
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Prime minister Boris Johnson insists that the judgement can't be made this early, while Health Secretary Matt Hancock previously said the government "took the right decisions at the right time".
