Britain did right thing at right time to tackle COVID-19 - PM Johnson

Reuters
Updated ·1 min read

LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) - Britain introduced the right measures at the right time to tackle the spread of coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday when asked about the UK death toll from COVID-19, which is among the highest in Europe.

"I do think that broadly speaking we did the right thing at the right time," Johnson said, adding it was hard to make international comparisons of death tolls across different countries at this stage.

"It was completely right to make our period of lockdown coincide as far as we possibly could with the peak of the epidemic."

Johnson said that he did not like the word "austerity" and it would not be part of the government's approach in tackling rising national debt, adding that the government would encourage an economic bounceback in "all kinds of ways".

(Reporting by Costas Pitas, Estelle Shirbon and Stephen Addison; writing by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison)