LONDON — The man who served as Boris Johnson's most senior adviser at the height of the coronavirus pandemic has apologized publicly for the UK government's response to the crisis, which he has said fell disastrously short of what the public should expect. Dominic Cummings, who quit his post in Downing Street last November, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday that when the public needed us most the government failed. And I'd like to say to all the families of those who died unnecessarily that I am sorry. To date, more than 127,000 British citizens have died within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test. Throughout his evidence, Cummings appeared eager to paint himself as being alert to the seriousness of the pandemic in January 2020, long before many others in government were taking it seriously. He claimed his former colleagues failed to see the smoke when Asian countries, notably Taiwan, hit the panic button around the turn of the year.

He said that senior government officials were occupied with other activities, be they professional or, in Cummings' words, literally skiing, which meant the government was not on a war footing early enough.

Cummings claimed that the Prime Minister believed the coronavirus to be little more than a scare story and would say things like he wanted to have England's chief medical officer inject him with Covid live on air to prove it was nothing to worry about. Central to Cummings's criticism of Johnson and his government is a lack of preparedness, leading to lockdowns being delayed and policies like herd immunity being pursued. Cummings claimed that he first told Johnson the UK needed to be put under hard lockdown measures on March 11, 2020. The national lockdown was not imposed until March 23. Cummings listed numerous reasons for this delay, ranging from a belief that the British public would not go along with Wuhan- >