Coronavirus: Experts fear UK is ill-prepared for COVID-19 winter peak

More medical experts have expressed concern about the danger of a second coronavirus wave worsening in winter with the added threat of the flu and no vaccine yet available.

Academics and scientists say testing, tracing and government messaging has not been sufficient to prepare for a resurgence of the disease in Britain.

Regius Professor of medicine at Oxford University, Sir John Bell, warned of a "really bumpy winter".

"My bet is that we will get a second wave, and the vaccines won't get here in time to stop the second wave," he said during a Royal Society of Medicine webinar.

"And I'm not sure the new home testing is going to get there in time either."

Professor Bell said he suspects a COVID-19 vaccine, which he guesses will be available by early next year, "won't sterilise people but they'll take the edge off the disease".

"They'll be worth having in a population. But... they're not going to solve this problem."

Echoing these concerns, disease control expert Dr Bharat Pankhania told Sky News he believed the public has been "lulled into a sense of complacency" about the ongoing threat of coronavirus.

"Preparations for winter are not sufficiently in place, as we are nearly in September but there is not enough extensive local testing and contact tracing," the former consultant in communicable disease control said.

"The government is doing things like Eat Out to Help Out and that's all very well but the messaging needs to be stronger around the threat of cases rising in Autumn and Winter and doing more to promote people getting their flu vaccine and meningococcal jabs and still taking social distancing seriously."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance have acknowledged a winter peak is likely.

In an effort to curb a resurgence, Mr Johnson postponed the relaxing of restrictions originally set for 1 August and announced £300m for A&E facilities to cope with the winter peak.

The government has also expanded its flu jab programme to reach 30 million people in England and said it will boost coronavirus testing.

It has announced a revamp of its national test and trace system, in which 6,000 contact tracers will be cut nationally and the remaining redeployed to local contact tracing groups.

But Dr Pankhania said these moves should have come sooner, adding he is "fearful about what winter will bring."

An Academy of Medical Sciences report commissioned by the government's chief scientific adviser and backed by 37 experts warned last month that coronavirus hospitalisations could peak early next year and a "worst case scenario" could see 120,000 new deaths.

A few weeks later, another report warned the UK risked a second wave of coronavirus more than two times as large as the initial outbreak if plans to reopen schools full-time in September went ahead without improvements to the test and trace scheme.

Doctors have warned that preparing for the second wave will require a different tactic to preparations for the first due to difficulty separating flu patients from COVID-19 patients.

There have been more than 320,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK and over 41,000 deaths, government figures show.

The current 'R' number - the average number of people an infected person will pass the disease on to - was estimated to be between 0.8 and 1 as of August 14.

The Department of Health has been contacted for comment.