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Boris Johnson's coronavirus strategy could lead to between 35,000 and 70,000 excess deaths over the next year, according to scientific analysis.

Experts from University College London and the University of Cambridge and Health Data Research UK carried out the research, which hasn't been peer-reviewed and warned of the unintended consequences of the government's strategy.

First reported in the Financial Times, it warns that the current measures do not go far enough in stopping the spread of the disease or identifying the most vulnerable high-risk groups.

The government should “do more in the pursuit of suppressing the epidemic whether through enforced lockdowns or enforced social distancing rather than voluntary measures”, they add.

The team of clinicians, statisticians and epidemiologists says the UK measures do not go far enough.

The number of deaths is estimated using NHS health records from 3.8m adults in England.

Dr Amitava Banerjee of UCL, the lead author, told the FT: “The UK government is currently following a partial suppression policy of population-wide social distancing, combined with home isolation of cases, as well as school and university closures, but this is currently not [mandatory].

“Our study indicates that the government should implement more stringent suppression at the population level to avoid not just immediate deaths but also long-term excess deaths,” he said.

UCL professor of clinical epidemiology Harry Hemingway, said that more data was needed so experts could track the disease.

He said: “The current regulatory and legislative environment around NHS data hampers the public health emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”