In UK, death toll incresed to 14,576 with 847 new coronavirus related deaths recorded in hopsitals yesterday.
"Finally, we will likely see only a gradual decrease from the peak and this means we will see several hundreds of announced deaths every day for some time ahead". Anthony Costello, professor of International Child Health and Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health, told the Health and Social Care Committee.
"We were too slow on a number of things, but we can make sure that in the second wave we're not too slow". "We could see 40,000 deaths by the time it's over".
Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself contracted COVID-19 and, after a week in hospital that included three days in intensive care, is now recovering at Chequers - the country estate of British premiers.
"And so we need to make sure that we have a system in place that can not just do a certain number of tests in the laboratory, but has a system at district and community level".
Health minister Matt Hancock said mass community testing was part of the British strategy, though the government has yet to find an antibody test that is accurate enough to be used.
MPs at the committee were told that healthcare staff are "genuinely concerned" over the safety of their patients, should staff be spread too thinly.
Police officers, the fire service, prison staff, "critical" local authority staff, members of the judiciary and some other government staff will qualify if they need tests.
The previous day there were 861 deaths and last week the United Kingdom death toll peaked at 980.
Figures from the Department of Health and each home nation do not include deaths in care homes, hospices and other settings outside hospital, masking the UK's true coronavirus death toll.
Britain has the fifth-highest official death toll from Covid-19 in the world, after the United States, Italy, Spain and France, though the UK figure only covers hospital fatalities and the real number is probably much higher.
He has advocated contact tracing and quarantining like that which has been carried out in South Korea, where people who have come into contact with someone with coronavirus are alerted and put in quarantine.
