Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently insisted during a COVID inquiry in London that he was not properly warned about the potential seriousness of novel coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.
“When you read that an Asiatic pandemic is about to sweep the world, you think you’ve heard it before, and that was the problem,” the former prime minister told the inquiry, referring to earlier viruses such as Sars.
“I was not being informed that this was something that would require urgent and immediate action.”
At the beginning of the inquiry, Johnson said he was “deeply sorry” for the “pain and the loss and the suffering of the [COVID] victims and their families.” But despite apologizing, Johnson did not admit to any avoidable mistakes that occurred during the pandemic while under his leadership.
“There were clearly things we could and should have done if we had known and understood how fast it was spreading. But we didn’t,” Johnson said, when asked if he had disregarded the attention that the pandemic needed during a time when he was spending most of his half-term holiday at a country retreat in February 2020.
“I think it would certainly be fair to say of me, the entire Whitehall establishment, scientific community included, our advisers included, that we underestimated the scale and the pace of the challenge,” the 59-year-old former prime minister said during the inquiry.
The former prime minister stuck with his argument that his government was simply unaware of the seriousness of the issue, despite evidence of a WhatsApp message from Dominic Cummings, the former prime minister’s top aide, saying the virus was “probably out of control now and will sweep the world.” In a separate message Cummings had complained that Johnson viewed COVID as being comparable to the H1N1 flu.
During the inquiry, it was revealed that about 5,000 WhatsApp messages from Johnson’s phone—which he used for his time in office—were not going to be recovered. Those messages were from the period of January to June of 2020. Johnson denied making a “factory reset” when asked about the missing messages, saying he didn’t remember “any such thing.”
“I haven’t removed any WhatsApp from my phone and I’ve given you everything that I think you need,” Johnson said during the inquiry.
The former prime minister also apologized for meetings on COVID which he admitted were “too male dominated” as well as to former senior civil servant Helen MacNamara for Cumming’s disparaging remarks that were made about her. Cummings had referred to MacNamara in a WhatsApp message to Johnson and Lee Cain in August of 2020 as a “c***”.