Giving evidence in a parliamentary select committee, Sir Patrick Vallance said the number of infected across the U.K. might have been between 35,000 and 55,000 at the moment, Anadolu reported.

The chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and the former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt asked Vallance if the British government's approach involved reducing the numbers of deaths from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands.

"That is the hope, that we can get it down to that,” Vallance said.

He said: "To put that into perspective, every year in seasonal flu the number of deaths is thought to be about 8,000.

"So if we can get this [number of coronavirus cases] down to numbers of 20,000 and below, that is a good outcome."

"It is still horrible. That is still an enormous amount of deaths,” he added.

"It is still enormous pressure on the health services".

The revelation on government strategies came on a day when the number of infected people has risen to 1,950, according to health officials, with an increase of 407 more cases since yesterday.

He added: “We might need to do more. I’ve been very clear from the beginning, there’s a whole range of things we need to look at -- all of them are on the table.

“We might need to do more and at some point we might need to back off and be able to monitor what is the consequence of backing off.”

The latest updated number of deaths from coronavirus is 55 in the country.

Reporter’s code: 50101