“Doctors Were Planning To Announce My Death” – Boris Johnson

BORIS Johnson has revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death as he battled coronavirus.

The PM told The Sun on Sunday he was given “litres and litres of oxygen” to keep him alive.

He added: “It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it. They had a strategy to deal with a ‘death of Stalin’-type scenario.

“I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place.

“The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong.

“They gave me a face mask so I got litres and litres of oxygen and for a long time I had that and the little nose jobbie.”

The stark reality of his plight quickly struck home when he was wired up to monitors and moved into intensive care.

He told how “the bloody indicators kept going in the wrong direction” and he realised there was no cure for Covid-19.

During his life-or-death struggle at St Thomas’ Hospital last month, Boris kept asking himself: “How am I going to get out of this?”

He recalled: “It was hard to believe that in just a few days my health had deteriorated to this extent. I remember feeling frustrated. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting better.

“But the bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe.

“That was when it got a bit . . . they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally.”

Sitting in his office at 10 Downing Street, Mr Johnson welled up as he relived the extraordinary two weeks in which he nearly lost his own life but recovered in time to see the birth of another – his new son Wilfred.

He said: “It was thanks to some wonderful, wonderful nursing that I made it. They really did it and they made a huge difference.

“I can’t explain how it happened. I don’t know . . . it was just wonderful to see the . . . ”

His voice falters while his eyes redden and he pauses to take a deep breath.

He continues: “I get emotional about it . . . but it was an extraordinary thing.”

Mr Johnson’s fiancee Carrie Symonds released the first picture of their son on Saturday. He arrived just 17 days after his dad was discharged from hospital.

The tot has the middle name Nicholas – in recognition of doctors Nicholas Price and Nicholas Hart, who saved the PM’s life in intensive care.