Boris Johnson defends virus record after ex-aide's attack

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday rejected claims by his former chief aide that he botched Britain's coronavirus response and is unfit for office, denying an allegation his government oversaw tens of thousands of needless deaths.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock also hit back after Dominic Cummings singled him out for criticism in an excoriating attack on the government.

Cummings, who left his job as Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top adviser in November, claimed the government’s slow and chaotic initial response, and Johnson’s failure to learn from mistakes, meant that tens of thousands of people had died unnecessarily.

“People did not get the treatment they deserved. Many people were left to die in horrific circumstances," he said in testimony to lawmakers.

Cummings — whose key role in the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union helped propel Brexit-backer Johnson into the prime minister's post — said Johnson was “unfit for the job,”

Johnson brushed aside the criticism, saying “some of the commentary I have heard doesn’t bear any relation to reality.”

“This has been an incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we’ve taken lightly,” Johnson said. He said that “at every stage, we’ve been governed by a determination to protect life, to save life.”

“What people want us to get on with is delivering the (reopening) road map and trying, cautiously, to take our country forward through what has been one of the most difficult periods that I think anybody can remember,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Cummings accused Hancock of lying to the public and said he “should have been fired” for mistakes including testing failures that saw patients with the virus discharged from hospitals to...