Around 20,000 people every day are flouting instructions to self-isolate, the government's testing tsar admitted today.
Baroness Dido Harding gave the staggering estimate - and conceded it could be even higher - as she was grilled by MPs.
Amid rising anxiety that the lack of compliance with the Test & Trace system could hamper efforts to control the virus, the peer said evidence suggested 20 per cent of the 100,000 cases and contacts identified every day did not fully obey the rules.
Lady Harding highlighted a range of potential reasons including money worries, not having help from people to obtain food and other essentials, or just finding the isolation too oppressive.