UK PM Boris Johnson brushes off former aide's criticism over COVID-19 response

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on May 27 dismissed the allegations of his former ide Dominic Cummings who said that the British government’s botched COVID-19 pandemic response caused led several to die needlessly. Cummings also said that Johnson is “unfit” to do his job. However, UK PM has denied all the accusations that his government oversaw tens of thousands of casualties since the novel coronavirus started spreading in the country last year. 

Apart from British PM, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has also hit out at former Downing member’s criticism. Cummings left john as Johnson’s top adviser in November 2020. Brushing off the criticism by Cummings, Johnson told the reports  on Thursday that “some of the commentary I have heard doesn’t bear any relation to reality.”

“This has been an incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we’ve taken lightly,” Johnson said adding that “at every stage, we’ve been governed by a determination to protect life, to save life.”

“What people want us to get on with is delivering the (reopening) road map and trying, cautiously, to take our country forward through what has been one of the most difficult periods that I think anybody can remember,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, Hancock said, “the unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true...We worked as hard as we could to protect people who live in care homes,” he said at a news conference. “But we could only do that once we had the testing capacity,” Hancock added, saying “it wasn’t possible” to test everyone being discharged from hospitals at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

UK PM Johnson ‘unfit’ to handle COVID-19: Cummings

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings has said that thousands of people died needlessly due to the shortcomings of the government in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. As per BBC report, Cummings said that the British PM was “unfit for the job” while adding that Johnson did not consider the scientific advice and wrongly delayed the lockdown to stem the spread of novel coronavirus. UK PM’s former top aide claimed that British Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been fired for making false remarks even though the allegation has been denied by Health Secretary.

At a marathon seven-hour evidence session, Cummings told the MPs, “The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this.”

“I would like to say to all the families of those who died unnecessarily how sorry I am for the mistakes that were made and for my own mistakes at that,” he added. Cummings was reportedly forced out of Number 10 at the end of last year after an internal power struggle. He has reportedly said that those on the front line of the pandemic were like “lions” being “led by donkeys.”

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