British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was disastrously slow to impose a lockdown in 2020 because he thought Covid-19 was a scare story and even considered getting injected with the coronavirus on live television to show it was benign, his former chief adviser said.

In a blistering attack on the British state, Dominic Cummings told lawmakers that the government was completely unprepared for the worst public health crisis in decades and that ministers, including the prime minister, were on holiday in February 2020, some skiing.

Though Cummings' attacks have so far failed to dent the prime minister's popularity, his testimony is likely to form the broad lines of scrutiny of a public inquiry next year into the Covid-19 response.