LONDON: Former prime minister Boris Johnson requested the UK authorities’s prime scientific advisors early within the pandemic if a “particular hairdryer” could possibly be used towards COVID-19, it emerged on Wednesday (Nov 1).
Because the virus started to unfold worldwide in March 2020, Johnson shared with officers a YouTube video of the dryer getting used “to kill COVID”, based on his former prime aide Dominic Cummings.
The ex-British chief needed Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, and Patrick Vallance, its chief scientific advisor, to present their opinions about it, Cummings claimed in a press release submitted to a public inquiry into COVID-19.
It’s analyzing the UK authorities’s efficiency coping with the virus, which led to just about 130,000 fatalities being recorded in Britain by mid-July 2021.
The toll is likely one of the worst official COVID-19 dying counts on the planet.
Cummings, who stop Johnson’s authorities in late 2020 after falling out with him, has used his 115-page witness assertion and in-person testimony to assail his former boss’s dealing with of the disaster.
“A low level was when he circulated a video of a man blowing a particular hairdryer up his nostril ‘to kill COVID’ and requested the CSA and CMO what they thought,” the previous aide said, referring to Whitty and Vallance.
AFP FactCheck the declare about hair dryers and saunas killing coronavirus on Mar 19, 2020.
Cummings additionally claimed Johnson was “extraordinarily distracted” when the virus first hit Britain, attributable to varied private and political issues.
“He had a divorce to finalise and was grappling with monetary issues from that,” he wrote.
“An ex-girlfriend was making accusations about him within the media. His present girlfriend needed to finalise the announcement of their engagement.
“He stated he needed to work on his Shakespeare guide,” Cummings added.
The inquiry, chaired by a retired senior choose, is to interview Johnson and present Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was finance minister through the pandemic, later this yr.
Johnson was ousted final yr by Conservative MPs after a string of scandals, together with the so-called “Partygate” controversy round lockdown-breaching events in Downing Road.
He stop as an MP in June after lawmakers discovered he had intentionally misled them concerning the affair.
Cummings has additionally confronted criticism, particularly for abusive language revealed in textual content messages from the time and his half in a “poisonous” tradition atop the UK authorities.
“The dominant tradition was macho and heroic,” Helen MacNamara, who was one of many nation’s highest rating feminine officers, testified Wednesday.
“It was positively unhelpful when the nation wanted considerate and reflective decision-making.”
