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An Oxford University professor claims Britain's coronavirus outbreak peaked before the 'unnecessary' lockdown was put in place.

Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the centre for evidence-based medicine, believes infections were at their highest around mid-March - 21 days before the country recorded its worst day for deaths on April 8.

NHS England reported 803 coronavirus deaths on April 8, the highest number of fatalities announced in a single day so far, with fatalities appearing to fall on the days after that.

The figure is not concrete as it may be updated in the future - and it also only covers deaths in hospitals.

Professor Heneghan has accused the Government of listening to the wrong scientific advice - and urged leaders to lift the lockdown.

He told Mail Online : "The UK Government keeps saying it is using the best science.

"But it appears to be losing sight of what’s actually going on. We’ve been getting scientific advice that is consistently wrong.

"It has failed to look at all the data and understand when the peak of infections actually occurred."

He said infections dropped by 50 per cent between March 16 - when the Government launched a hand washing and social distancing drive - and the lockdown on March 24.

The expert said the prediction models used by the scientists often proved to be 'some way out' and insisted that the lockdown will be more damaging for the UK than coronavirus.

Professor Heneghan pointed to Sweden as an example of a country that had 'held its nerve' in resisting lockdown and was not suffering a 'doomsday scenario'.

He urged the Government to reopen society, warning that the restrictions would have a severe impact on the economy and people's mental and physical health.

The practising GP told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The key is no-one has really understood how many people actually have the infection.

"You could do that really quickly with random sampling of a thousand people in London who thought they had the symptoms.

"You could do that in the next couple of days and get a really key handle on that problem and we'd be able to then understand coming out of lockdown much quicker.

"In fact, the damaging effect now of lockdown is going to outweigh the damaging effect of coronavirus."