THE UK could suffer “40,000 deaths” in the first wave of coronavirus and see further waves before the outbreak is over, a leading health expert has suggested.

Professor Anthony Costello of University College London’s Institute for Global Health told MPs: "This wave could see 40,000 deaths by the time it's over.

"If we are going to suppress the chain of transmission, we all hope lockdown and social distancing will bring about a large suppression of the epidemic so far. But we will face further waves.

"And so we need to make sure that we have a system in place that cannot just do a certain number of tests in the laboratory but has a system at district and community level."

He told a virtual meeting of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee that "the harsh reality" was the country was “too slow with a number of things," which may have led the UK to have "probably the highest death rates in Europe".

However, the expert insisted blame should not be apportioned “at this stage," saying: "We can make sure in the second wave we're not too slow."

The latest figures show there are just over 103,000 cases of coronavirus in the UK with 13,729 deaths.

Prof Costello pointed out that the collapse of infrastructure in other countries, which struggles to control coronavirus could be a "burden on aid" across the world.

"We're also a trading nation and I mean Africa has actually been the fastest growing region of the world in the last decade," he told the committee.

"If they collapse, that's going to be both the burden on aid for everyone, it's going to be migration, going to be flights, and the economy that we deal with, particularly after Brexit, we're looking for new markets, will be very important."

Referring to longer-term foreign policy, he said: "We've seen that President Trump has cut budgets to the World Health Organisation, which diminishes the status of America.

"China is actually delivering an awful lot of personal protective equipment and testing capacity to many countries in Africa and the long-term impact of that could be people turn to the East rather than to the West.”

He added: "Remember, that with the open borders that you need for trade, you're going to have the risk of people bringing imported infections in if we don't get control over the world."