The UK is likely to be "one of the worst, if not the worst" hit countries in Europe by coronavirus, one of the nation's leading experts said today.
Director of the Wellcome Trust, Sir Jeremy Farrar, told the BBC's Marr Show that the UK is 'likely' to be the worst-affected country in the continent.
Asked by host Andrew Marr whether the UK was heading towards the worst death rate in Europe, Sir Jeremy told him it was 'possible'.
"The numbers in the UK have continued to go up," he responded.
"I do hope that we're coming close to the number of new infections reducing, and in a week or two the number of people needing hospital reducing, and tragically in a couple weeks time the number of deaths plateauing and then starting to come down.
"But yes the UK is likely to be certainly one of the worst if not the worst affected country in Europe."
It comes after the number of daily deaths in the UK passed the peaks in Italy and Spain for the first time on Friday 10 April.
The daily rise of 980 outstripped previous records of 971 in Italy on March 28 and 950 in Spain on April 3 - though was narrowly beaten by France.
Sir Jeremy, who is also a member of the SAGE committee that advises the government on its Covid-19 response, said continuing testing in the community would “buy you time” to deal with the crisis.
He compared the UK to Germany where widespread testing has taken place on a "remarkable" scale, which allowed health officials to know "exactly what was happening in the epidemic", he said.
"Inevitably the UK will learn lessons from how Germany has managed to control the epidemic to date," he added.
He described vaccines as "our only true exit strategy from this" and said, without one in place, second and third waves of the virus were "probably inevitable".
“Having the right treatments to save lives and also having a vaccine in the future is going to be absolutely critical to prevent those second and third waves,” he said.
The UK death toll is expected to top 10,000 when the latest figures are released this afternoon.
On Friday, the UK saw its biggest increase in deaths in one day when a total of 980 new deaths were announced.
