coronavirus deaths a former Government adviser has said. Professor Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, has told the Science and Technology Committee that introducing lockdown measures just a short time earlier could have halved the country's death toll which is currently at more than 40,000.He said: "The epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced."So, had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half."However, Prof Ferguson, who originally estimated that UK deaths would unlikely exceed 20,000, did add that based on what was known about transmission and fatalities at the time, the measures.