UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried to resist calls for imposing a second COVID-19 lockdown in the fall last year, arguing that most people dying from coronavirus were over 80, Johnsons former top aide Dominic Cummings told BBC broadcaster on Tuesday
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th July, 2021) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried to resist calls for imposing a second COVID-19 lockdown in the fall last year, arguing that most people dying from coronavirus were over 80, Johnsons former top aide Dominic Cummings told BBC broadcaster on Tuesday.
According to excerpts of an interview, which will be broadcast in full later today, Cummings is quoted as saying that the prime minister wanted the pandemic to "wash through" the country rather than destroy the economy.
To prove his allegations, Cummings shared WhatsApp messages he apparently exchanged with his then-boss in which Johnson had noted that the average age of those dying was 82.
"That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer," Johnson reportedly wrote.
After stepping down from his job in December, Cummings has directed much of his criticism against the government's handling of the pandemic at the prime minister and the former Health Secretary Matt Hancock. In May, during a seven-hour statement before the parliament's health and science select committees, he openly blamed them for tens of thousands of unnecessary coronavirus-related deaths, arguing that Johnson was "unfit" to be prime minister and that at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak he had downplayed the threat by calling it a "scare story" and repeatedly ignoring advice to lock the country down.
In his fresh barrage against Johnson, Cummings also claimed that on March, 2020, he had to dissuade him from visiting the Queen for their weekly face-to-face meetings.
