Early results of the governments mass sampling scheme has revealed that 20,000 people are being infected every day with coronavirus.
The MailOnline was told by infectious diseases experts that around 40,000 Brits were being infected during April.
But scientists still have no idea what the daily infection rate was prior to the peak, due to the governments abysmal testing strategy.
However, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have revealed in preliminary data, coronavirus had been found in between 0.2 and 0.6 of Brits, meaning 130,000 to 396,000 people.
Experts say that around 12m people in England have been infected as virologists estimate the death rate is below 1% and other data from antibody schemes say the virus kills 0.36% of patients.
The antibody schemes also suggests that some 2,000 out of the 40,000 who are infected with the virus will die, but leading experts say that the true death toll is above 40,000.
Professor John Edmunds, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also warned MPs on Friday that the UK is still seeing a “sobering” number of people dying, and we should not be coming out of lockdown.
Dominic Raab said that the current R rate, which is the reproductive rate of the virus, is between 0.5 and 0.9.
But Professor Edmunds places the R number at 0.75 and 1 due to the higher death toll in care homes and the community.
Should the R number go above 1 then coronavirus will spiral out of control causing a second and more deadly wave.
He also said that the if 20,000 a day prediction is correct, then this raises serious concerns and questions over easing the lockdown.
The Professor told the Science and Technology Committee meeting on Friday, “The incidence has to come right down for contact tracing to be feasible, really, to be able to contact trace all of those contacts for those individual cases.
“If we get the incidence right down, I think that contact tracing will play a role.
“I don’t think it’s going to be sufficient to… I wouldn’t want to rely on that alone.
“So, I do think that we will need other social distance measures in place.”
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