MICHAEL GOVE admitted today that Prime Minister Boris Johnson missed five Cobra meetings in the run-up to the coronavirus outbreak in Britain.

The government’s early handling of the crisis fell under the spotlight over the weekend after an investigation by the Sunday Times found ministers had missed a number of opportunities to lessen the impact of the pandemic, while supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) had been allowed to shrink due to austerity measures imposed by Conservative governments from 2010. Despite a 2016 pandemic drill concluding that the NHS would face drastic shortages of PPE and ventilators if a pandemic struck, ministers did not act on its recommendations.

Mr Johnson had skipped five Cobra meetings earlier this year, the Times reported, attending his first only on March 2 when almost 40 cases of Covid-19 had been confirmed across the country.