British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent a third night in intensive care with COVID-19 complications, but is improving and able to sit up as his government prepares to discuss how to review its most stringent shut down in the peacetime history.
Johnson, 55, was on Sunday evening admitted to London’s St Thomas’ Hospital with a persistent high temperature and cough, and was rushed to intensive care on Monday. He has received oxygen support, but has not been put on a ventilator.
“He has been sitting up in bed and been engaging positively with the clinical team,” British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday. “His condition is improving.”
Photo: AFP
US President Donald Trump said that Johnson appeared to be improving after what he described as a “tough bout.”
“I just spoke with the representatives of the UK and I think that their great prime minister is doing much better today, or at least better,” Trump told reporters.
While Johnson is out of action, the country is entering what scientists have said is the deadliest phase of the outbreak and that the government is pondering the question of if and when to lift lockdown measures that have shut down much of the economy.
The government’s emergency response meeting was yesterday to discuss how it should deal with a review on lockdown measures. Johnson’s designated deputy, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab, was to chair the meeting.
Total UK hospital deaths from COVID-19 rose by a daily record of 938 to 7,097 as of 4pm on Tuesday, health officials said on Wednesday.
As the world’s fifth-largest economy faces the worst economic hit since World War II and the state has had to rapidly ramp up spending, the government said that it had expanded its overdraft with the Bank of England.
“Any drawings will be repaid as soon as possible before the end of the year,” the British Treasury and the Bank of England said.
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