British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday praised doctors for saving his life during his week-long hospitalization for COVID-19 treatment has left him too weakened to resume immediate leadership of the government.
Looking pale and gaunt, the prime minister thanked the British National Health Service (NHS) for the care he had received.
In a five-minute video posted on Twitter, he called the health service “unbeatable,” and lauded the “personal courage” of the doctors, nurses, cleaners and cooks who work for it.
Photo: Reuters
“The NHS has saved my life, no question; it’s hard to find words to express my debt,” Johnson said, his voice still croaky.
He thanked the staff who cared for him, including “two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way.”
Johnson would not return to work right away, instead continuing his recovery at his official country residence, Chequers, his office said.
British Secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab has been deputizing, while emphasizing that decisions are being made by the Cabinet as a whole.
Meanwhile, the British government said in a statement that Parliament would resume activity on Tuesday next week.
British House of Commons authorities would consider how to use technology to best allow lawmakers to fulfill “essential constitutional functions of conducting scrutiny, authorizing spending and making laws,” the government said on Sunday.
British Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Alok Sharma told Sky News that 4,200 small and medium-sized businesses had secured government-backed loans, a number dismissed as “low” by former Bank of England governor Mervyn King.
Sky News reported that British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak plans to double the amount companies can borrow under a state-guaranteed loan program.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer reiterated a call for the government to publish an exit strategy from the lockdown, as the nation is still far from returning to normality.
After three weeks of lockdown, which has brought large swaths of the economy to a standstill, government scientists still are not confident the pandemic has peaked.
The death toll rose by 737 on Sunday, surpassing 10,000 to reach 10,629, making the UK the fifth country to cross the grim threshold.
“The UK is likely to be certainly one of the worst, if not the worst-affected country in Europe,” Jeremy Farrar, a member of the scientific panel advising the government on the pandemic, told the BBC.
British Secretary of Health Matt Hancock called the death toll landmark “somber” and said comments like Farrar’s show the need for the public to keep its discipline in observing “social distancing” rules.
“The future of this virus is unknowable as yet, because it depends upon the behavior of millions of people,” Hancock said in a televised news conference. “The good news is that so far we have managed to start to see a flattening of the curve, because people are following the social distancing measures.”
Hancock also said the NHS is preparing to launch a contact tracing app that can be used to tell other users if someone they have been physically near had tested positive for the virus.
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