UK PM condition improving as he fights COVID-19

Monitoring Desk

LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s condition is improving and he is able to sit up in bed and engage with clinical staff, finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday as Johnson remained in intensive care battling COVID-19.

Johnson, who tested positive nearly two weeks ago, was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital on Sunday evening with a persistent high temperature and cough but his condition deteriorated and he was taken into intensive care on Monday.

The 55-year-old British leader has received oxygen support but was not put on a ventilator and his designated deputy, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, said he would soon be back at the helm as the world faces one of its gravest public health crisis in a century.

“The latest from the hospital is that the prime minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving. I can also tell you that he has been sitting up in bed and been engaging positively with the clinical team,” finance minister Rishi Sunak said at a daily government coronavirus news conference.

Earlier, Downing Street said Johnson was “clinically stable” and responding to treatment for COVID-19 complications, amid questions about how key coronavirus crisis decisions would be made in his absence.

A spokesman said Johnson was not working, but was able to contact people if needed.

“The prime minister remains clinically stable and is responding to treatment. He is in good spirits,” Johnson’s spokesman said, similar to what Downing Street has been saying over the past two days.

As Johnson battled the novel coronavirus in hospital, the United Kingdom was entering what scientists said was the deadliest phase of the outbreak and grappling with the question of when to lift the lockdown.

Inside the government, ministers were debating how long the world’s fifth-largest economy could afford to be shut down, and the long-term implications of one of the most stringent set of emergency controls in peacetime history.

The United Kingdom’s total hospital deaths from COVID-19 rose by a record 938 to 7,097 as of 1600 GMT on April 7. (Reuters)