UK failed 'disastrously' in Covid-19 crisis, PM Johnson's ex-chief adviser says

London: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's former chief adviser said the government failed in the COVID-19 crisis and fell "disastrously short" of the standards the public had a right to expect during the most devastating global pandemic in decades.

With almost 128,000 deaths, the United Kingdom has the world's fifth worst official COVID-19 toll, and Johnson was slow to appreciate the significance of the threat from the virus in early 2020 as it spread from China towards Britain's shores. Dominic Cummings, the strategist behind the 2016 Brexit campaign and Johnson's landslide election win in 2019, told lawmakers that the British government and Johnson's Downing Street office was far to slow to spot the crisis.