BORIS Johnson considered being injected with Covid 19 on live TV to "prove" the disease was not serious, Dominic Cummings has told MPs.

The former No 10 chief aide said the Prime Minister thought the infection was like "swine flu" and did not need to cause concern.

And he suggested that Johnson – who later became critically ill with Covid 19 – had considered being injected with coronavirus by chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty to prove it was not that serious.

"The view of various officials inside No 10 was – if we have the Prime Minister chairing Cobra meetings and he just tells everyone 'it's swine flu, don't worry about it, I'm going to get Chris Whitty to inject me live on TV with coronavirus so everyone realises it's nothing to be frightened of' – that would not help actually serious planning," he said.

Earlier Cummings told MPs ministers, officials and advisers "fell disastrously short of the standards the public has a right to expect" in the pandemic as apologised for the mistakes made and the lives lost "unnecessarily".

He made the statement as he gave evidence to a Commons committee which is examining the UK Government's handling of the crisis which has claimed the lives of more than 120,000 people in the UK.

Cummings said: "The truth is is that senior ministers, senior officials and senior advisers like me fell disastrous short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this.

"When the public needed us most the government failed and I would like to say to all the families who died unnecessarily how sorry I am for the mistakes that were made and my own mistakes at that."

READ MORE: Tory government 'fell disastrously short' in dealing with pandemic, says Cummings

No 10 is braced for explosive claims about the the Prime Minister's handling of the pandemic with Cummings giving evidence to the Commons health and science committees.

He compared how Taiwan "hit the panic button" and closed its borders around New Year's Eve 2019 and introduced quarantine systems in January 2020, going on to say that along with most of the West, the UK failed to "hear the alarm bells".

Cummings said he first asked ministers on January, 25, 2020 what plans they had in place to deal with a pandemic and said he regrets that he "did not follow up" and "push" on preparations at the end of January 2020, adding that it was not until the end of February that it was realised the plans were "hollow".

He said the Government was not operating on a "war footing" in February 2020 as the global crisis mounted and "lots of key people were literally skiing in the middle of February".

Cummings admitted not attending early Cobra meetings – claiming information leaked too frequently from them and he would rather discuss issues in conversations with chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.

The former Downing Street strategist, who masterminded the Vote Leave campaign, was a key figure in Downing Street until he was ousted last November in an internal power struggle.

Last year he was accused of breaching Covid restrictions by travelling to Durham to London after his wife fell ill with the disease.

He admitted travelling from Durham to Barnard Castle later saying he did so to "test his eyesight".

Ahead of his appearance before MPs, Cummings tweeted a picture of a whiteboard on which the Government's "plan B" for the first wave of the virus was sketched out.
Cummings had said the Government's original plan was for limited intervention with the hope of achieving herd immunity but that was abandoned when it became clear the scale of the death toll that would result.

Earlier, Cabinet minister Grant Shapps dismissed Cummings' evidence as a "sideshow".

He said the focus on Cummings as "Westminster bubble stuff" and "I do find this obsession about one single adviser a bit odd".

Asked whether Cummings is a liar, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told BBC Breakfast: "I will leave it to others to judge how reliable a witness that former adviser happens to be."

Asked whether Cummings was a "trusted adviser", Shapps said: "He was certainly an adviser of the Government. It's for others to decide the trusted part of it."

Cummings' claims about the Government having a secret policy for herd immunity at the start of the pandemic were also challenged.

WhatsApp messages from March 2020 reported by Politico showed that, while in charge of No 10, Cummings privately ordered senior Cabinet ministers to deny herd immunity was ever government policy.

Shapps also denied claims that Johnson called Covid-19 "kung flu" and considered being injected with coronavirus live on air in an attempt to demonstrate it was nothing to be scared of.

The Daily Mail reported Cummings will make those claims when he appears before MPs.

On LBC Radio, Shapps was asked if he had ever heard the Prime Minister use the term "kung flu".

"Never, no," the Transport Secretary said.

Asked if he had heard the Prime Minister say he wanted to be infected live on TV,Shapps said: "No, never, again no."

Shapps added: "It's a bit of a circus from someone who was there at the time and had the facility and the ability to influence a lot of these decisions, of course."