Boris Johnson and U.K. health secretary reject ‘Dom’s bombs’ on pandemic bungling - The Washington Post

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LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Thursday rejected claims by a former Downing Street insider that they bungled the handling of the coronavirus pandemic and allowed tens of thousands of needless deaths.

During incendiary parliamentary testimony on Wednesday, Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former top adviser, described the government’s response to the pandemic as “lions led by donkeys,” declared Johnson “unfit for the job” and said Hancock should be sacked for “criminal, disgraceful behavior.” Most specifically, Cummings accused Hancock of lying about protecting nursing homes, when he had instead enabled outbreaks by not requiring that patients be tested before being released from hospitals.

Johnson responded Thursday, telling reporters during a visit to a hospital that “some of the commentary I have heard doesn’t bear any relation to reality.”

When asked whether Cummings was telling the truth when he claimed to have heard Johnson say he would rather see “bodies pile high” than impose a third lockdown, the prime minister simply said he had “already made my position very clear on that point.” He previously denied making the remark.

Hancock also sought to defend his record, saying “these unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true.”

Called to Parliament on Thursday to answer lawmakers’ questions, Hancock said, “I’ve been straight with people in public and in private throughout.”

At an evening news conference at Downing Street, Hancock was repeatedly asked about Cummings’s claim that the health secretary had said in March 2020 that the elderly would be tested before being discharged into nursing homes.

As in Parliament earlier in the day, Hancock didn’t respond to specific claims head-on. He said his “recollection” was that he committed to building testing capacity, but said it took time to build that. “We worked as hard as we could to protect care homes,” he said.

It wasn’t until mid-April of 2020 that hospital patients were required to be tested before discharge and not until July that regular testing began for nursing home staff and residents.

Opposition Labour Party lawmakers pointed to data showing 30,000 nursing home residents had died of covid-19 and 25,000 elderly patients had been discharged from hospitals into nursing homes early in the pandemic without all being tested.

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer branded Cummings’s claims “devastating” and “very serious.” He called for immediately opening an official investigation of how the pandemic escalated so quickly in Britain. Johnson has announced there will be a full inquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis, but not until the spring of 2022.

The story dominated British newspapers, which widely reported on the “Domshells” and “Dom’s bombs” on Thursday.

“Cummings rains fire on No 10,” read the front page of the Times, referring to the prime minister’s Downing Street offices. The Daily Telegraph accused the former adviser of seeking revenge. Cummings was pushed out of the administration in November, after clashing with both Johnson and the prime minister’s fiancee.

Several other front pages focused on perhaps the harshest of Cummings’s claims: that a substantial portion of Britain’s huge coronavirus toll could have been prevented. More than 128,000 people have died in the country.

“People like my dad were treated as expendable,” one grieving family member told the “Good Morning Britain” television program on Thursday, adding that Cummings’s testimony had been heartbreaking to watch.

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Boris Johnson and U.K. health secretary reject ‘Dom’s bombs’ on pandemic bungling - The Washington Post
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