British PM ‘could have gone either way’

– Doctors treating Boris Johnson for coronavirus prepared to announce his death after he was taken to intensive care, the British prime minister said yesterday, in his first detailed comments about his illness.

“It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it,” he was quoted as saying by the Sun on Sunday newspaper in an interview. “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.”

Johnson, 55, first announced he had contracted Covid-19 on 27 March but maintained he had only mild symptoms. Yet he failed to shake the illness after a week of self-isolation.

He was taken to hospital as a precaution on 5 April for further tests but, within 24 hours, was moved to intensive care.

The Conservative Party leader spent three days receiving “oxygen support” and admitted after his discharge on 12 April that his fight with the virus “could have gone either way”.

He told the newspaper he did think “how am I going to get out of this?”, but he did not think at any point he was going to die.

He said he felt frustrated he was not getting better but the reality hit home when doctors were deliberating whether to intubate him and put him on a ventilator.

“That was when it got a bit... they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally,” he told the weekly tabloid.

Johnson has repeatedly paid tribute to staff of the state-run National Health Service. – AFP