PROFESSOR Anthony Costello, of University College London’s Institute for Global Health, warned the UK is “going to face further waves” of the coronavirus.

“If we’re going to suppress the chain of transmission of this virus in the next stage we all hope that the national lockdown and social distancing will bring about a large suppression of the epidemic so far but we’re going to face further waves,” he said.

“And so we need to make sure that we have a system in place that cannot just do a certain number of tests in the laboratory, but has a system at district and community level.”

He said “the harsh reality” is “we were too slow with a number of things” which may have led the UK to have “probably the highest death rates in Europe”.

But Prof Costello said we “should not have any blame at this stage”. “We can make sure in the second wave we’re not too slow,” he said.

“Actually, I’m not sure we need 100,000 tests per day in reality if we can get this epidemic damped down.

“More important is to have the systems in place and I’d like to know much more from [Health Secretary Matt] Hancock – how are they restructuring the public health teams? Have they got plans in place?

“Will they need extra volunteers, for example?”

He said “just asking people to self-isolate is not going to achieve the quarantine you want to”.

Prof Costello said the collapse of infrastructure in other countries that struggle to control coronavirus could be a “burden on aid” across the world.

“We’re also a trading nation and I mean Africa has actually been the fastest growing region of the world in the last decade,” he told the Health and Social Care Committee.

“If they collapse, that’s going to be both the burden on aid for everyone, it’s going to be migration, going to be flights, and the economy that we deal with, particularly after Brexit, we’re looking for new markets, will be very important.”

Referring to longer-term foreign policy, he said: “We’ve seen that President Trump has cut budgets to WHO, which I think diminishes the status of America.

“China is actually delivering an awful lot of personal protective equipment and testing capacity to many countries in Africa, and I think the long-term impact of that could be people turn to the East rather than to the West.

“Remember that with the open borders that you need for trade, you’re going to have the risk of people bringing imported infections in if we don’t get control over the world.”

Meanwhile another expert has said the UK’s coronavirus death rate cannot be effectively compared with other countries because of different testing strategies.

The Government has been asked why some nations in Europe appear to be doing better than Britain on the face of the data but there are a number of reasons why the figures cannot be treated as like for like.

As of April 16, the UK had 21 deaths per 100,000 of the 66.6 million population. While this figure does not include deaths outside hospitals in England, it may include a small number outside hospitals in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

At the same date, Belgium had reported 42 deaths per 100,000 of its 11.5 million population.

Spain had seen 41 deaths per 100,000 of its population of 46.9 million, Italy 37 per 100,000 of its 60.4 million population, and France 27 per 100,000 of its 67.0 million population. Germany had reported five deaths per 100,000 of its population of 83.0 million.

The number of deaths are based on information from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the population figures come from Eurostat’s 2019 estimates.

But Professor Norman Fenton, director of the Risk and Information Management Research Group at Queen Mary University of London, cautioned about making a direct comparison of the figures.

He said: “The major reason why UK death rates may not be comparable is because of the different testing strategies.

“The death rate is normally defined as the proportion of deaths among people confirmed with Covid-19. However, the number confirmed with Covid-19 is totally dependent on both the number and type of people tested and the kind of testing.”

Prof Fenton said to the best of his knowledge there had been no systematic attempt in the UK at random testing, which could determine the underlying rate of infection at given points in time.

He highlighted there is no data for how many people with no coronavirus symptoms, or mild symptoms, have Covid-19.

Prof Fenton added: “The situation in other countries is different.”

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