Former aide accuses UK government of failing public on COVID response

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former chief advisor accused the government of “disastrously” failing the public by reacting slowly to the spread of the coronavirus.

Dominic Cummings’ accusations came in his evidence to a parliamentary committee looking into what lessons can be learned from mistakes made during the COVID-19 pandemic as more than 170,000 deaths put the country on top place in number of deaths in Europe.

He said the government did not do as much as it could in the early months of 2020, when the first reports of novel coronavirus outbreak had started to come in.

Cummings told the lawmakers that Johnson saw COVID-19 as "a scare story" in February 2020 and he compared it to swine flu outbreak.

He said: "The prime minister described it as the new swine flu, I certainly told him it wasn't.

"The view from No 10 was if the PM chairs COBRA and says it's just swine flu that would not help."

"The government and No 10 was not operating on a war footing in February. Lots of people were literally skiing," he said.

"Like on testing, like on shielding, there was no plan," he said.

Cummings told the committee members that the government “failed the public” when they needed them most and apologized to the families of COVID-19 victims who died in early stages of the pandemic.

“The truth is that senior ministers, officials, advisers like me, fell disastrously short of the standards the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this,” Cummings said.

"When the public needed us the most, the government failed. I want to apologise to all those families who had people that died,” he added.

He said he "bitterly regrets" not advising stronger action.

Cummings had caused a great public anger by his trip to County Durham and Barnard Castle in late March 2020 while the country was in full lockdown and intercity travel was banned.

The former aide was the manager of Leave campaign before the 2016 EU referendum, which ended the UK’s decades long membership to the bloc.

He was accused of using fear factor, alongside Boris Johnson and then-UKIP leader Nigel Farage, during the campaign as some of the ads suggested that if the UK remained in the EU, millions of Turks would come to the country once Turkey becomes an EU member state.​​​​​​​

Cummings was fired by Johnson on Nov. 14, 2020 after a spat over power sharing within the government ranks, which involved sacking civil servants.