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Britain’s Johnson Says Pandemic ‘Past Peak’ After Surviving COVID-19

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News

(Worthy News) – In his first appearance since surviving COVID-19, Britain’s prime minister expressed hope that his nation is defeating the coronavirus disease pandemic and could “now see the sunlight.” Boris Johnson suggested that figures showed Britain was “past the peak” of its worst health crisis since the 1918 influenza outbreak.

He spoke in London while Britain’s official death toll of COVID-19 rose Thursday to 26,711, the world’s third-highest behind the United States and Italy. Confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 6,032 to 171,253, according to official estimates. But Johnson said there were reasons for optimism as “for the first time, we are past the peak of this disease.” And, “We are coming through the peak or rather we are coming over what could have been a vast peak. And we are on the downward slope,” the British leader told reporters.

Sounding spiritual, Johnson added: “It’s as though we have been going through some huge Alpine tunnel. And we can now see the sunlight and the pastures ahead of us.” He also pledged that his government would soon present guidelines for restarting the economy, reopening schools, and providing for safe travel and workplaces. But Johnson declined to provide specific target dates. Instead, the prime minister made clear that those would be determined by how quickly the number of new infections, hospital admissions, and deaths continues to decrease.

Johnson warned: “It’s vital that we don’t now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain.” The prime minister said the use of face masks might be part of the new strategy. However, his scientific advisers had questioned their effectiveness. Thursday’s meeting with the press was Johnson’s first since becoming the first world leader known to have survived a severe bout of COVID-19 in April.

In earlier remarks, he reserved special thanks for two nurses — Jenny from New Zealand, and Luis from Portugal — for saving his life in the Intensive Care Unit at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. “The reason, in the end, my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching,” Johnson recalled. “And they were thinking, and they were caring and making the interventions I needed.”

There was more hopeful news for the prime minister this week as his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, gave birth to a baby boy at a London hospital on Wednesday. That was slightly earlier than had been expected. Symonds, 32, had said previously that their baby was due in the early summer. Johnson, 55, is due to take a short period of paternity leave later this year.