The NHS is likely to cope with coronavirus, according to Neil Ferguson whose advice led to a drastic shift in policy last week

The virus death toll could end up being “substantially lower” than 20,000, with most of the fatalities in people who would have died later this year anyway, a government adviser has said.

Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London scientist whose research precipitated tougher government measures last week, told MPs: “It [the deaths of those who would have died anyway] might be as much as half or two thirds of the deaths we see, because these are people at the end of their lives or who have underlying conditions.”

He told Today on BBC Radio 4 this morning: “We’re going to have a very difficult few weeks in which NHS services will be intensely stressed but won’t break. We will have surge capacity, and perhaps