British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would return to work at the start of this week, according to reports yesterday just hours after it was announced that the UK’s COVID-19 death toll had passed the “tragic” milestone of 20,000.
The Press Association said Johnson would be back in his Downing Street office today after recovering from the virus.
A Number 10 source quoted by Sky News said that the 55-year-old prime minister was “raring to go.”
Photo: AP
Johnson has been recuperating at the prime ministerial retreat, Chequers, outside London since his release from hospital on April 12.
He spent three days in intensive care and later admitted “things could have gone either way,” after contracting the virus.
His return to work comes as pressure intensifies on his government on several fronts over its handling of the crisis.
Health department figures released on Saturday showed a further 813 people had died in hospital after contracting COVID-19, pushing the official number of fatalities to 20,381 as of yesterday.
British Home Secretary Priti Patel described it as “a deeply tragic and moving moment.”
Passing 20,000 was an unwanted milestone, as the medical director of National Health Service England Stephen Powis and the UK’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance had said previously during the pandemic that keeping the number of fatalities below 20,000 would be “a good outcome.”
“The nation today will be deeply moved by the figures of the number of people who have died,” Patel said during the daily Downing Street briefing.
It was an increase on the 684 deaths reported the previous day and came after the government said that the virus had hit its peak.
However, there was some optimism as the number of new infections fell by 473 to 4,913, according to the same health department figures.
University of Oxford analysis showed that the number of deaths in England might be on a downward spiral, as it said one-third of the 711 additional deaths recorded in the government figures on Saturday occurred more than a week earlier.
Despite that, the latest figures confirm Britain has been one of the worst-hit countries in the world and the actual death toll could be much higher when deaths in the community are taken into account, particularly at care homes.
As well as a rise in fatalities, questions are being asked of the government over shortages in personal protective equipment and a lack of widespread testing, particularly of frontline health and social care workers.
There is also pressure, reportedly from within the ruling Conservative Party, to relax social distancing rules.
Johnson ordered the country into lockdown on March 23, but Patel said ministers would not yet give a date for any relaxation of the rules.
“We’ve made a great deal of progress, but actually we’re not out of the woods yet, we really are not,” she said.
The lockdown was extended on April 16 and is due for review on Thursday next week.
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