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He told the PA news agency: “Our initial estimates show that a delay of up to a month would lead to the cancellation of around 5,000 planned events. That’s everything from festivals to grassroots music gigs.

“We think it will cost the industry tens of millions of pounds and take work from thousands of people who have been without it for more than a year now. It is a seismic impact on the whole sector.”

“The vaccine isn’t perfectly effective and a lot of younger people, in whom the infection is very much milder but nevertheless occasionally it does put people in hospital… there are a lot of people still to vaccinate – 50% of the adult population hasn’t had their second dose.

“So it buys time if we prolong the current state of social distancing.”

He added: “Well, it is a race between the vaccination and virus, and another four weeks makes a significant difference,

“But I think it also will help us to really establish the extent to which the vaccination breaks or weakens the link between getting infection and getting the sort of serious effects of ending up in hospital, or potentially dying.

“Also, we’ll get a lot more information – we’ll see what’s happening with hospital admissions, which, of course, lag infections.”

He told Sky News: “The question is, why are we in this position? The NHS has done a fantastic job on vaccines but why has there been such poor investment in public health infection control to supress these outbreaks?

“Patrick Vallance got it right in February when he said that as the numbers come down it is essential that we do do find, test, trace and isolate.

“And our failure to do that three times in the past has led to three national lockdowns and 150,000 deaths.

“I’m quite angry about this. Where is the £38 billion going into Test and Trace for local public health? Why are the test results so slow? Why haven’t we got (an) adequate army of contact tracers? We’re in a war, we should have an army on the ground.”

Prof Costello added that there has been a “failure to invest in isolation”.

“I feel that, if we had the public health measures to compliment the vaccination programme, we would be in a much safer place, we would have our economy able to open now. and we wouldn’t have all of these pressures on livelihoods.”

On those admitted to hospital with the virus, he told Sky News: “We are seeing some really positive news on that, although with the Delta variant we are seeing the numbers in hospital creeping up a bit, I think they were just over 1,000 at the weekend.

“But when you look back, it was something like 38,000 at the peak in January. So we are seeing that severing of the link between the disease and hospitalisations and death.

“I think that on that basis, everyone will recognise that there comes a point where we do have to live with this disease and recognise that you cannot go for a zero Covid approach, you have to live with it, and vaccination is the key to that.

“So I think once we have got those second doses in people’s arms, once we have got that level of protection up to around that 81%, then I think people will be more comfortable with it.”

Asked if he would vote against a delay if put to a vote in Parliament, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What I would do is listen to what the Prime Minister says, listen to the arguments, and if I’m not convinced that these restrictions are necessary then I would of course vote against it and I hope every member of the House of Commons will listen to the argument and make their minds up.

“There has to be a vote in the House of Commons. This can’t be decided by a few ministers sitting behind closed doors. It has to be an open and transparent decision.”

He said there should only be restrictions “if there is a very clear danger to society”.