- Boris Johnson said the UK should just “ignore” the coronavirus last year, the BBC reported.
- The United Kingdom went on to become one of the most affected countries in the world during the pandemic.
- Johnson’s government was supposed to be pursuing a “herd immunity” strategy.
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Boris Johnson suggested last year that the UK should just “ignore” the coronavirus and it would go away, just before it became one of the most affected countries in the world, the BBC reported.
The UK Prime Minister, who reportedly told colleagues in recent weeks that he regrets not reacting quickly to the coronavirus pandemic, made comments to colleagues on January 31, the same day that the first cases of coronavirus were reported. in the United Kingdom.
According to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Johnson was heard saying, “The best thing would be to ignore it,” and said that an overreaction to the virus could do more harm than good.
“The general view was that it was just hysteria. It was like the flu,” a source told the BBC about the coronavirus view on Downing Street.
The Johnson administration was in particular considering pursuing a “collective immunity” strategy, with advisers even discussing encouraging so-called “chicken pox parties” to increase the speed at which the virus spreads.
“There was even talk of ‘chicken pox parties’, where healthy people can be encouraged to get together to spread the disease,” the BBC reported.
The prime minister later decided to ignore aides’ instructions before the first major coronavirus press conference on March 3 to tell the public to stop shaking hands with each other, the BBC reported.
Instead, the prime minister announced at a news conference that he had shaken everyone’s hands at a hospital where patients infected with COVID-19 were being treated.
“I was in a hospital the other night, where I think there were some patients with coronavirus and I shook everyone’s hand, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands,” he said.
Only on March 23 did Johnson introduce a complete national blockade, during which the public was prevented from leaving their homes for non-essential purposes.
Johnson was repeatedly criticized for not introducing a blockade earlier, despite the fact that countries like Italy – which were experiencing more advanced coronavirus outbreaks – started to cancel mass meetings and close schools weeks before the UK.
Britain now has the highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe. Johnson reportedly told close allies that he would have acted “harder, earlier and faster” and said it was a mistake not to implement the first block early.
Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the government’s top advisers for coronavirus, said in June last year that the government could have saved 20,000 lives if it had introduced the blockade earlier.
“If we had introduced the blockade a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least half,” Ferguson told members of parliament last year.
“The measures, given what we knew about the virus at the time, were justified. Certainly, if we had introduced them earlier, we would have seen far fewer deaths.”
Johnson’s spokesman declined to deny the details of the BBC report.
“During the pandemic, what we did is what we think is the best course of action to protect lives,” they said at a regular news conference.