ENGLAND’S chief medical officer anticipates a deadly new surge of coronavirus infections this year, with Sage suggesting at least a further 30,000 deaths could be on the way.

Chris Whitty told a Westminster committee of how “all the modelling” shows virus cases will soar following the UK Government’s planned easing of restrictions.

The Prime Minister has set out his planned easing of rules in England, with proposals to open beer gardens, non-essential shops, gyms and hairdressers from April 12, to allow indoor gatherings from May and end all restrictions from June 21.

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Whitty, and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, said they did not know if this roadmap would need to be delayed.

Whitty explained to MPs that even if a small proportion of people are left vulnerable to Covid-19, “that still equates to a very large number of people overall” in terms of infections and deaths.

“What we are going to see is, as things are opening up, what all the modelling suggests is that at some point we will get a surge in virus,” he said.

“We hope it doesn’t happen soon, it might for example happen later in the summer if we open up gradually or because of the seasonal effect it might happen over the next autumn and winter.

“All the modelling suggests there is going to be a further surge and that will find the people who either have not been vaccinated or where the vaccine has not worked.

“Some of them will end up in hospital and sadly some of them will go on to die.”

He added that the ratio of between the number of people infected and the number who go onto die would be reduced significantly thanks to the vaccination programme.

He said: "The great majority of people who die will be either older or who have pre-existing health conditions – but not all.”

But “we don’t know, of the people who have been vaccinated, who it is that the vaccines have worked in and who it has not” – although it would only be a minority for whom the jag will be ineffective.

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He warned MPs not to get “too stuck” on the numbers in the modelling but there would still be “significant numbers” dying, as happens with flu despite the vaccination for that.

He explained: "The current modelling does make a number of assumptions, I can go into that in detail if you’re interested but broadly that is the reason we’re expecting to see further deaths although the ratio of cases to deaths will go right down as a result of vaccination but not right down to zero unfortunately.

“I would not get too stuck on individual numbers, I have repeatedly said all the way through this pandemic forward projections of exact numbers are really difficult to interpret.

"Zeroing in on particular numbers, every single number will be incorrect but what they’re doing is giving an indication of general principles.”

Discussing the roadmap, he said that even opening up in a “steady way” would result in more deaths, but fewer than in a rushed release of restrictions.

“It is really important that we do not give any impression that what we are expecting is this just goes away and there is no further deaths.

“That is not realistic and I think to pretend that to the British public would be completely wrong.”

An earlier version of this article suggested Chris Whitty predicted 30,000 deaths - this has been amended to reflect this is a model Sage has considered looking at the situation even under the most optimistic set of assumptions.