Boris Johnson on getting Covid: ‘You don’t realise what a state you’re in’

Boris Johnson has said he perhaps did not realise quite how ill he was with Covid-19 when he was in intensive care in April, because the nature of the virus means people sometimes cannot appreciate the gravity of their plight.

The prime minister spent three nights in the intensive care unit of St Thomas’ hospital in central London after a bout of the virus turned serious. He spent a week in hospital in all.

In an interview with the US network CBS at Downing Street, Johnson was asked whether, at the time, he feared he might not survive. The prime minister initially dodged the question, instead praising the NHS and saying treatments for coronavirus had “moved on a long way” since he was ill.