'I underestimated threat'

BORIS Johnson has admitted his Government “underestimated” the threat posed by the Covid-19 virus in the early days of the pandemic, as he apologised to the victims at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.

The former prime minister said that, at the start of 2020, coronavirus “wasn’t really escalated to me as an issue of national concern” as the data emerging from China was misunderstood.

Challenged over the slow response to the unfolding crisis, he said Government ministers should have “twigged” about the need for action much sooner, adding that it was only when he saw the “horrors” of the outbreak in Italy in February that year that he realised the seriousness.

Mr Johnson suggested the experience of previous diseases such as Sars, Mers and swine flu clouded officials’ judgement, while a coronavirus pandemic was “outside our living experience”.