UK PM was reluctant to tighten COVID restrictions thinking people dying were 'all over 80', ex-aide claims
July 20, 2021, 6:38 am

UK PM was reluctant to tighten COVID restrictions thinking people dying were 'all over 80', ex-aide claims

Boris johnson

According to the Republic World, Dominic Cummings, the ex-aide of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has claimed that British PM Boris Johnson was reluctant to tighten the COVID-19 restrictions as the cases surged last autumn because he thought the people dying from the disease were 'essentially all over 80'.

The Republic World said, in the first television interview after he left the job last year amid the pandemic, Cummings told BBC that Johnson had denied that the National Health Service would be overwhelmed.

The UK PM told the ex-aide in a message, “I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks, I think we may need to recalibrate.”

Since levaing the office last year, Cummings has emerged as a staunch critic of the Boris Johnson-led government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The former political adviser has also accused the British government of being responsible for scores of avoidable deaths due to COVID-19 and has also shared a series of messages from October that are allegedly from Johnson to his aides.

In one of the messages, Cummings claimed that the UK PM joked that the elderly in the country could 'get COVID and live longer' because most of the people who succumbed to the disease were past the average age of life expectancy.

According the the BBC, Cummings further claimed that in the early days of the pandemic, Johnson was willing to keep his weekly face-to-face meetings with UK’s Queen Elizabeth II going even though the ex-aide had warned his then-boss that she might lose her life to COVID-19.

Cummings told the media outlet that Johnson told the officials that he should never have agreed to the first COVID-19 lockdown and that he had to convince the British leader not to take risks with the monarch.

"I said, what are you doing, and he said, I'm going to see the Queen and I said, what on earth are you talking about? Of course, you can't go and see the queen," Cummings said he told Johnson. "And he said, he basically just hadn't thought it through."

The Republic World added, in response to the series of claims that Cummings made to BBC, Downing Street said that UK Prime Minister had taken 'necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice' throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Number 10 spokesperson reportedly added that Johnson’s Conservative government had prevented the country’s NHS 'from being overwhelmed through three national lockdowns'.

Source: republicworld
Image source: Pixabay/AP-republicworld

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BENEFIT, the Kingdom’s innovator and leading company in Fintech and electronic financial transactions service, has sponsored the BuildHer CityHack 2025 Hackathon, a two-day event spearheaded by the College of Engineering and Technology at the Royal University for Women (RUW).
Aimed at secondary school students, the event brought together a distinguished group of academic professionals and technology experts to mentor and inspire young participants.
More than 100 high school students from across the Kingdom of Bahrain took part in the hackathon, which featured an intensive programme of training workshops and hands-on sessions. These activities were tailored to enhance participants’ critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and team-building capabilities, while also encouraging the development of practical and sustainable solutions to contemporary challenges using modern technological tools.
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For his part, Dr. Humam ElAgha, Acting Dean of the College of Engineering and Technology at the University, said: “BuildHer CityHack 2025 embodies our hands-on approach to education. By tackling real-world problems through creative thinking and sustainable solutions, we're preparing women to thrive in the knowledge economy – a cornerstone of the University's vision.”