British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on Tuesday, likened his health with that of the country’s economy, which was superficially healthy but had some chronic underlying conditions which were exposed by COVID-19.
Johnson, who was hospitalised after testing positive for coronavirus earlier in the year, has often spoken about his struggle to lose weight to ward off an added risk from the deadly virus.
“When you look at the general economic condition of this country when we went into lockdown there was a similarity because we were on the face of it in pretty good shape… And yet if you looked more carefully you could see – and indeed many of us said so at the time – that the UK economy had some chronic underlying problems: long-term failure to tackle the deficit in skills, inadequate transport infrastructure, not enough homes people could afford to buy… that isn’t good enough,” said Johnson.
In a Reuters report, Johnson was quoted as saying, “I have to admit the reason I had such a nasty experience with the disease is that although I was superficially in the peak of health when I caught it, I had a very common underlying condition — my friends I was too fat.”
The 56-year-old UK PM went on to lay out his party’s plans that would mean not to "restore normality" but to "reform and renew" the country.
Overall, he sought to strike a note of optimism with the annual party policy speech as he promised that the government was working "night and day to repel this virus". "I know the people of this country are going to defeat this virus.”
478 people admitted to hospital due to COVID-19 on Sunday, increasing the number of people admitted to the hospital due to the coronavirus in a day by nearly a quarter. 14,542 new cases were reported on Tuesday. Extra restrictions have been introduced in several places across the UK to prevent the virus from spreading. The UK has had 530000 cases of COVID-19 and around 42,445 deaths due to the virus.
The UK government said it will not announce an anticipated plan to introduce COVID-19 testing for international arrivals until November, and instead, the government will set up a global travel task force, a Reuters report read. The move comes after Airline companies urged the government to set up COVID-19 testing as an alternative to quarantine, as a ‘last chance’ to save the industry.
