British PM running government from hospital – the latest

Boris Johnson, the British PM, has become the first world leader hospitalised by the Covid-19 coronavirus. He was admitted to hospital for tests last night after suffering “persistent symptoms 10 days after testing positive for the virus”. The UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will chair the Government’s Covid-19 daily meeting after Boris Johnson was hospitalised as a “precautionary step” although Downing Street says Mr. Johnson remains in charge of the government.

The PM, who has been isolating in Downing Street after testing positive last month, has a persistent fever, so his doctors felt he should go into an undisclosed hospital for tests in what the government is calling a “precautionary step.” Johnson is expected to stay overnight.

“On the advice of his doctor, the Prime Minister has tonight been admitted to hospital for tests. This is a precautionary step, as the Prime Minister continues to have persistent symptoms of coronavirus ten days after testing positive. for the virus.”

“He will stay for “as long as needed in the London NHS hospital where he was taken as a ‘precautionary step’ on the advice of his doctor, rather than as an emergency.”

55 year old Mr. Johnson became the first leader of a major power to announce that he had tested positive on March 27. He went into immediate isolation at an apartment in Downing Street and on Friday said he was staying there as he still had a high temperature.

Without any firm guidelines and only contradictory precedents to go by, there is no simple, “enshrined” succession scenario if the British prime minister becomes incapacitated.

SOURCE: Reuters