Prof Spector said that he no longer watched the Government‘s daily briefings as he felt the statistics were not presented in context, particularly the death rates.

He said: ‚It‘s very sad people die of anything. Yesterday around 600 people died of Covid but on a normal day in February 1,500 people die of heart disease, strokes, cancer etc or the flu.

‚This has got a lot of people extremely anxious and are petrified to leave their homes and may have problems coming out if we do not put those statistics into context.

‚People are dying of Covid but people die of other things. I would like to see less fear-mongering.‘