Johnson had four-day break just as the pandemic struck

Official files have revealed that Boris Johnson took four days off during a crucial period in the run-up to locking down the UK when the Covid pandemic struck.

- DAVID MADDOX

The revelation has come after the group campaigning for families of the Covid bereaved described the former prime minister as being “beyond contempt” for his attack on the damning report produced by the inquiry into his government’s handling of the pandemic.

Mr Johnson has refused to apologise for an estimated 23,000 extra deaths the inquiry stated he caused by delaying lockdown for a week.

Instead he used his column in a national newspaper to lambast the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Heather Hallett, and argue that Professor Neil Ferguson, whose estimates the figure was based on, was “hysterical”.

Official disclosure for February 2020, described by the inquiry report as a “lost month” in preparing to respond to the pandemic, shows that Mr Johnson took an extended break during the half-term holidays at Chevening, a governmental estate in Kent.

He was questioned by the inquiry on what he had been doing between 14 and 24 February 2020 when he gave evidence in December 2023.

At the time, he said: “There wasn’t a long holiday that I took. I was working throughout the period and the tempo did increase.”