Boris johnson

Dominic Raab is a lawyer, not a doctor, by temperament as well as training. He is not a politician who talks about his feelings much. This made it all the more striking to hear him talking about Boris Johnson as a ‘friend’, and his hopes for his recovery. The reassuring news is that Boris Johnson’s condition is stable and he hasn’t required a ventilator. Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work Understandably, Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work. Raab emphasised Cabinet collective responsibility and how they were implementing the plans that Boris Johnson had already set out.

Last night, Downing Street announced that Boris Johnson is now in intensive care at St Thomas’ Hospital after his condition deteriorated. He is not on a ventilator currently but has been moved there in case he needs one.  This is the statement from No. 10: Since Sunday evening, the Prime Minister has been under the care of doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital, in London, after being admitted with persistent symptoms of coronavirus. Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the Prime Minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital. The PM has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is the First Secretary of State, to deputise for him where necessary.

Boris Johnson has been admitted to hospital for tests after having a continuous temperature for 10 days since testing positive for coronavirus. Those close to him are keen to stress that he is in for ‘routine checks’ and that this is not an emergency admission, or anything like that. I am told the problem is that the symptoms are persistent and refusing to clear up. They are, I am informed, not getting worse. Number 10’s official statement tonight stresses that Boris Johnson remains in charge of the government. But someone who has been unwell enough with coronavirus to be admitted to hospital, albeit for tests, will clearly struggle to operate at their normal capacity. This is especially true given how draining coronavirus can be.

The economic, and social, damage being caused by coronavirus is becoming clearer by the day. In the UK, we had the news on Wednesday that 850,000 more people than usual have applied for universal credit in the past fortnight. Across the Atlantic, the number of jobs lost in the last few week is approaching 10 million – that’s more than were lost in the Great Depression. This economic news underlines the need for an ‘exit strategy’ from this crisis. The lockdown is right at the moment; it appears to be the least-worst way to keep this virus within the NHS’s capacity to deal with it and so save lives.

Over the last few weeks, we've all been getting used to the realities of working from home. So Mr S was pleased to see the Cabinet getting stuck in with remote working earlier this morning. Yes, secretaries of state and government ministers dialled in from their London pads and constituency piles to coordinate the response to coronavirus.  https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1244985949534199808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Downing Street mandarins opted for the popular video conferencing app Zoom (The Spectator favourite, if you're interested, is Houseparty). Some have questioned whether it was sensible for the PM to post a pic of his assembled team alongside the digital code for the Cabinet's online meeting.

My jaw slightly dropped on Friday when Michael Gove announced that the number of Covid-19 cases in the UK was now doubling every three to four days. This is significantly faster than the five days that was initially built into the government's forecasts for the rate of increase in sufferers, and the 4.3 days that epidemiologist Neil Ferguson told me on 17 March was the new estimated ‘baseline’ doubling time. On the one hand, this accelerated rate of infection explains why the government moved to enforce much more severe measures to restrict social interaction just over a week ago, because presumably its scientific advisers had more than an inkling that the virus was spreading significantly faster than would allow hospitals to cope.

It is hard to think of a prime minister doing something that so goes against their political instincts as Boris Johnson declaring that people can only leave their homes for a list of state-approved activities. One of the constants of his political and journalistic career has been his opposition to the state infringing on people’s liberties. But the coronavirus and the public health challenges posed by a pandemic have forced him to shift. The fact that the authorities will be able to enforce these new rules is a big shift from Sunday’s press conference when Boris Johnson seemed taken aback by the idea that the police could be asked to enforce the rules on social distancing.

This weekend has been dominated by photos of people having a jolly good time in groups at the park, or strolling along Columbia Road Flower Market as though nothing has changed. Sunday's Downing Street press conference was therefore dominated by questions about whether the government would clamp down on this behaviour to stop coronavirus spreading still further. But while Boris Johnson urged people to stop ignoring social distancing rules, telling them that 'even if you think you are personally invulnerable, there are plenty of people you can infect and whose lives will them be put at risk', he only suggested that there could be 'further measures if we think that is necessary'.