In excoriating account, Cummings slams UK PM’s COVID response

Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has said the United Kingdom failed in the COVID-19 crisis and has fallen “disastrously short” of standards during the pandemic. In a blistering attack on the government he once served, Cummings on Wednesday told legislators investigating the UK’s response that some ministers and officials went on vacation in February last year – when the virus was raging across the country – as he called for the health secretary to be fired. Cummings said the government “was not operating on a war footing on this in February in any way, shape or form”, adding that “lots of people were literally skiing”. “The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me, fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this,” Cummings said.