Boris Johnson asked top scientists Sir Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance if Covid could be killed by blowing a ‘special hair dryer’ up noses, it is claimed.
In what Cummings referred to as a ‘low point’ in the pandemic, Johnson allegedly sent a video of a man using a hair dryer to England’s chief scientific adviser and chief medical officer and asked what they thought.
The bizarre claim comes as it was revealed former health secretary Matt Hancock took up a mock cricket batsman’s stance and pretended to ‘bat away’ the ‘pressures of government’ during the pandemic.
Top civil servant Helen MacNamara recalled the moment today during the COVID inquiry today.
MacNamara said she had asked Hancock if he needed extra support after he recovered from the virus in early 2020.
She said in her statement: ‘He reassured me that he was ‘loving the responsibility’ and to demonstrate this took up a batsman’s stance outside the Cabinet room and said ‘they bowl them at me, I knock them away’.’
MacNamara told the inquiry: ‘I’m trying to explain just how jarring some of that was.
‘It does partly go back to my point about the nuclear levels of confidence that were being deployed, which I do think is a problem.
‘It really stuck with me, this moment.’
MacNamara said the incident was part of the ‘unbelievably bullish’ and dismissive culture that Boris Johnson presided over during the early phases of the outbreak.
Hancock also reportedly reassured colleagues that the pandemic was being dealt with in ways that were ‘not true’.
The former health secretary reportedly oozed a ‘breezy confidence’ initially and even laughed at the Italians at the beginning of the pandemic.
MacNamara also said Hancock would suggest in meetings that something was under control, but days or weeks later they would ‘discover that was not in fact the case’.
She previously said former PM Boris Johnson let the country down by not addressing Dominic Cummings’ misogyny.
Hancock previously apologised during the inquiry for ‘every death’ caused by the government’s ‘woefully inadequate’ pandemic response.
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has been set up to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the pandemic, and learn lessons for the future.
Yesterday, Martin Reynolds was questioned about why he turned on the ‘disappearing messages’ feature in a governmental WhatsApp group – called ‘PM Updates’ – in April 2021.
When quizzed on why, Reynolds suggested he had used it due to ‘concerns about potential leaks’, the Covid inquiry heard.
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