Boris Johnson complained that Covid wasn't really 'killing many people' any more - just weeks before the deadly second wave of the virus, it has been claimed.
Extracts from a memoir of the pandemic by disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock recall a text exchange with the former PM in August o2020.
According to Hancock, Johnson sent texts in the early morning, suggesting the government couldn't "justify the continuing paralysis" because "the virus isn’t really killing many people any more."
Mr Johnson is said to have written in a WhatsApp message: "If I were an 80-year-old and I was told that the choice was between destroying the economy and risking my exposure to a disease that I had a 94 per cent chance of surviving, I know what I would prefer."
Hancock said the then-PM "ran out of steam" after a few hours.
But he noted a "definite shift in attitude" towards the pandemic on the part of Mr Johnson.
Cryptically, he added: "Something has unsettled him. Who has he been on holiday with?"
The exchange is said to have taken place on August 24, when Mr Johnson had just returned from a holiday to Scotland with wife Carrie and their son Wilfred.
Less than a month later, as daily deaths began rising again, Johnson was forced to approve restrictions on the size of outdoor gatherings - and later a return to working from home and a curfew on hospitality.
On October 31, he announced the second national lockdown - allegedly fuming in his private office that he would sooner see "the bodies pile up" in the streets than order a third.
Mr Hancock's book is being serialised in the Mail.
Elsewhere in today's extracts, the ex-Health Secretary, who was ousted after it was revealed he'd broken his own guidance by having an affair with an aide, criticised Covid scientist Professor Neil Ferguson for a similar infraction.
"One person who’s clearly not keen on a hermit lifestyle is Prof Neil Ferguson [who was advising the Government on its Covid response]," he wrote.
"I wasn’t particularly sympathetic when I heard he’d been caught breaking the rules [by meeting with his lover].
"He’s issued a grovelling apology, but it was obvious he couldn’t continue to act as a Government adviser."
Mr Hancock took three days to resign as Health Secretary, after initially refusing to do so when pictures of him kissing Gina Coladangelo were published.
