The UK’s failure to mass test for coronavirus has been condemned by a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert, who revealed 44 laboratories had been left idle.

Ministers and scientists should have recognised weeks ago that a South Korean-style blitz – which reduced the death rate there to just three per million – was the correct response, Anthony Costello said.

“We have 44 molecular virology labs in the UK,” said the British paediatrician and former WHO director.

“If they were doing 400 tests a day, we would be up to Germany’s levels of testing – and that is perfectly feasible.”

Dr Costello accused Public Health England of being too “slow” in allowing labs it does not run to begin testing, which only started two weeks ago.

And he warned a rapid acceleration was the only way for the UK to avoid a painful six months before society “returns to normal”, as the public was warned on Sunday.

“We must go to mass testing and, when we remove the lockdown, I don’t think it will take six months. All the Asian states – it was six to eight weeks of being able to lift the lockdown,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The criticism comes after ministers were accused of misleading the public – and of putting lives at risk – over the low level of testing taking place.

At the weekend, Matt Hancock claimed the daily target of 10,000 had been reached, but it then emerged that fewer than 5,000 people were tested on one day.

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Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, acknowledged the public’s concern, saying: “People will rightly say, look, why wasn’t this all in place?”

The lack of testing has been blamed for the alarming situation where one in four NHS doctors is off sick – either ill or in quarantine.

The tests introduced for NHS staff from this week have been criticised as too little too late. If staff were tested, they could return to the frontline immediately if the results were negative.

A Downing Street spokesperson has insisted the government is still hoping to get to 25,000 tests a day within the next fortnight.

Asked why the UK was falling so far short of Germany’s testing of 70,000 people a day, No 10 blamed “getting all the equipment they need to conduct these tests at a time when everybody in the world wants them”.

But Dr Costello said: “They only allowed non-Public Health England laboratories to start testing two weeks ago, but that was after the strategy shifted to stopping community tests.”

He urged the UK to switch to the tactics in South Korea, saying: “Their death rate is three per million and they suppressed the virus.”