Downing Street Says China Faces A Reckoning

dailymail |  Boris Johnson’s allies turned on China over the coronavirus crisis yesterday, as Britain’s death toll from the epidemic reached four figures.

Ministers and senior Downing Street officials said the Communist state now faces a ‘reckoning’ over its handling of the outbreak and risks becoming a ‘pariah state’.

They are furious over China’s campaign of misinformation, attempts to exploit the pandemic for economic gain and atrocious animal rights record.

In another dramatic day:

• The UK death toll soared to 1,019 – up 260 in 24 hours, including the first surgeon to die from Covid-19;
• NHS medical chief Stephen Powis said ‘every one of us has a part to play’ if deaths were to be kept below 20,000;
• As No 10 released pictures of Mr Johnson at work, a poll found Chancellor Rishi Sunak is the voters’ favourite to be interim Prime Minister if Mr Johnson cannot perform his duties;
• Tracking by this newspaper suggested the virus sweeping Whitehall may have originated with the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier;
• The first images emerged from inside London’s ExCel Centre as it is being transformed into a 4,000-bed makeshift hospital;
• Deaths across Europe exceeded 20,000, with Italy suffering 10,023 fatalities and Spain seeing its biggest daily rise of 889 to reach 5,690;
• Global infections hit 600,000;
• Ministers were considering using the RAF to airlift Britons stranded abroad after Opposition pressure;
• A front line NHS doctor gave a harrowing account to this newspaper about how medics are having to ‘play God’ due to equipment shortages;
• Amid fear of more domestic abuse cases, Home Secretary Priti Patel warned culprits they would be ‘brought to justice’;
• Police risked fresh claims of snooping by tracking motorists’ cars to check how far they have travelled;
• Panic buyers provoked anger by throwing away excess food – some of it unopened;
• US President Donald Trump suggested he may try to put New York in quarantine;
• Wuhan, the Chinese epicentre of the crisis, partially reopened after more than two months in isolation;

The latest British victims of the epidemic to be named include the first surgeon to die from the virus. 

Transplant consultant Dr Adil El Tayar, 63, who died on Wednesday, is thought to have become infected while was working at a hospital in the Midlands.

His cousin, the BBC presenter Zeinab Badawi, said: ‘Adil was a stoic and an optimist and thought he would soon recover. This virus is unforgiving, indiscriminate and it can be brutal.’