Here are the main points from Boris Johnson’s press conference. Johnson welcomed what he described as “the biggest breakthrough yet” in the search to find an effective treatment for coronavirus. Referring to the results of a trial of dexamethasone, Johnson said he was very proud of the British team involved who had “led the first robust clinical trial anywhere in the world to find a coronavirus treatment proven to reduce the risk of death”. Prof Peter Horby from Oxford University, who led the trial, said the results of the trial were remarkable. He explained: In ventilated patients with Covid-19, the drug dexamethosone - so 10 days of treatment with that, which is a tablet or injection - reduces the risk of death by about 35%. In patients on the ward who require oxygen and have covid, it reduces the risk of death by about 20% - that covers about 75% of patients in hospital who will see a mortality benefit from using this drug. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, also welcomed the findings although he said that the drug, which only helps patients who are already severely ill, did not mean that other measures to reduce the spread of the disease were not needed. Johnson claimed he had only today become aware of Marcus Rashford’s campaign for school meal vouchers to be supplied in England over the summer. Asked about his U-turn on this, Johnson said: I talked to Marcus Rashford today to congratulate him on his campaigning, which to be honest I only became aware of very recently – today. I thank him for what he has done. I think he is right to draw attention to this issue, and basically we’ve got large numbers of kids who haven’t been able to get back into school. This answer surprised journalists because Rashford’s open letter to MPs on school vouchers was running as a big story yesterday and Johnson’s spokesman told the lobby at lunchtime on Monday that the PM would be responding to it. Perhaps Johnson was not telling the truth at the press conference; that has certainly happened before. But it is also possible that he was genuinely unaware of this media story, despite what his spokesman said yesterday. Prime ministers are often less aware of the news than journalists assume. In an interview at the Tory conference in 2019 Johnson said he had never heard of BBC presenter Naga Munchetty, even though the row about her comment about Donald Trump had been in the headlines for days. Johnson said that as the number of coronavirus infections fell, there would be a “strong case” for relaxing the 2-metre rule. He very much hoped to do that, he said. In response to a question from a member of the public asking for it to be replaced with a 1-metre rule, he said: We’re getting there ... I know people are very, very patient about this, we’re making as much progress on that as we can. Watch this space, because we absolutely hear you. Johnson claimed the UK had turned the tide in the fight against coronavirus. Asked about his comment 12 weeks ago that after 12 weeks the UK would have turned the tide, Johnson said: We are now starting to see – with drugs like dexamethasone and the idea that perhaps you could combine that with other things – we are seeing the first chink of light, which I was perhaps a bit dubious about. We are seeing the first chink of light and the hope that there will be preparations, treatments – there already are – that could make a big difference to mortality rates, and we are making big investments in vaccines. None of that negates the importance of us continuing to follow the rules, control the virus and save lives – we have turned the tide on it, we haven’t yet, finally, defeated it. He also repeated an image he used as the pandemic was just taking hold, describing the need to flatten the curve of the disease as squashing the sombrero. My colleague Heather Stewart questions whether his tone was appropriate.
Johnson said the case for merging DfID with the FCO was so strong he was surprised it had not happened already. He said: This is a fantastic opportunity for this country to make the most of our enormous influence abroad and maximise the UK’s projection by merging DfId and the FCO. Frankly, I think it is extraordinary we haven’t done it earlier – we have 28 out of 29 OECD countries doing it this way. It is far more coherent, it means that the sums that we spend on aid are used, not just to tackle poverty, deprivation around the world, but they are far better in line with UK government policy and the priorities of the British people. I’m absolutely certain it is the right thing for our country right now. Chris Deerin, a former comment editor at the Daily Telegraph who now runs the Reform Scotland thinktank, says this move may be only the start of Johnson’s reform of Whitehall institutions.
Johnson urged parents in England to send their children back to school if they were able to do so. It was safe, he said. He said his baby, Wilfred, and his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, were doing well. Johnson has said almost nothing in public about his baby. Other prime ministers have been happy to talk about their children but Johnson, whose private life is more complicated than most of his predecessors’, says as little as possible about them. Asked how the baby was doing, he said: I never normally comment about these sorts of things but it’s all fine so far ... All doing well.