In an interview with The Sun newspaper, British PM Boris Johnson, who was infected with the coronavirus, said that the "doctors were prepared to make his death announcement". Johnson expressed his gratitude to the country's National Health Service (NHS) for "getting him back to work" after hospitalisation with COVID-19, as well as a "much happier" hospital visit on Wednesday, when his fiancee Carrie Symonds gave birth to their baby boy.
The newborn son was named Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas, partly as a tribute to two of the intensive care doctors who saved the British leader's life as he battled COVID-19 complications. The choice of Nicholas was a nod to Nick Price and Nick Hart—two doctors at St Thomas' hospital, Reuters reported.
Johnson said his situation had deteriorated badly. In the interview with The Sun, he said, “It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it. They had a strategy to deal with a ‘death of Stalin’-type scenario. I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place. The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong. They gave me a face mask so I got litres and litres of oxygen and for a long time I had that and the little nose jobbie.”
“It was hard to believe that in just a few days my health had deteriorated to this extent. I remember feeling frustrated. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting better. But the bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe," he told The Sun.
The birth of his newborn son comes two days after he officially returned to work at 10 Downing Street on Monday from his recuperation from COVID-19 at the prime ministerial Chequers countryside retreat. Johnson and Symonds announced their engagement at the end of February, when it was also revealed that they were expecting their first baby in the summer. Symonds, who works for an ocean conservation charity Oceana, met Johnson during her time as the communications chief for the Conservative Party when he was the Mayor of London in 2012.
In July 2019, they became the first unmarried couple to move into Downing Street together. The news of their impending wedding and baby was made public soon after Johnson's divorce from his Indian-origin ex-wife Marina Wheeler got finalised in February. Wheeler, whose mother Dip Singh hailed from Punjab, is a barrister and columnist who has four grown up children with Johnson.
