UK s COVID disaster to be laid bare by PM Johnson s ex-chief adviser
FILE PHOTO: Former special advisor to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, is seen outside of his house, in London, Britain, May 4, 2021. REUTERS/Toby Melville reuters tickers
This content was published on May 26, 2021 - 00:20
May 26, 2021 - 00:20
By Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson s former chief adviser will on Wednesday cast his former boss as a dithering leader surrounded by fools whose ineptitude led to a disastrous response to the most devastating global pandemic in decades.
With almost 128,000 deaths, the United Kingdom has the world s fifth worst official COVID 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.
(Reuters) - The infrastructure for a digital vaccination certificate, intended to make traveling in the European Union easier, will be ready at EU level from June 1, according to the bloc s executive Commission. Member states then would be able to connect to the system from mid-June, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after a meeting of the leaders of the 27 nation bloc in Brussels on Tuesday. Now member states have the key and the urgent task to make sure that their national health systems are fed with the information of citizens health status so that the certificate can be issued. (Reporting by Sabine Siebold and Marine Strauss)
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A leading scientist on the WHO s COVID-19 mission to China said on Tuesday that a follow-up trip could be helpful to gather additional research on the origins of the disease, but should be separate from any audit of information provided by Beijing. The comments from Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans came after the United States called on Tuesday for international experts to be allowed to evaluate the source of the coronavirus and the early days of the outbreak in a second phase of the WHO s investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. Koopmans was part of the WHO-led team which spent four weeks in China earlier this year and in March published a report jointly with Chinese scientists that said the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal. Introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway, its report said. Discussions about the outbreak gained renewed attention this week as U.S.