Boris Johnson denies claims he could quit as prime minister due to ongoing health problems from coronavirus

Boris Johnson has denied reports he could quit as prime minister within six months because of ongoing health problems due to coronavirus.

The father-in-law of the prime minister’s top aide Dominic Cummings was reported to have told a holidaymaker that Mr Johnson was still struggling badly with the after-effects of the Covid-19 infection that saw him taken into intensive care in April.

According to The Times, Sir Humphry Wakefield compared Mr Johnson to a horse with a damaged fetlock, telling Anna Silverman, a visitor to his Chillingham Castle home in Northumberland: “If you put a horse back to work when it’s injured, it will never recover.”

In a video message after his discharge earlier this year, a visibly under-the-weather prime minister said there was “no question” the NHS had saved his life after a period when things “could have gone either way”. He has since shown a markedly increased interest in his health, saying his time in hospital was a “wake-up call” to the fact that he was overweight and needed to take action to slim down.

But he today insisted he was feeling "far better" having shed more than one and a half stone in weight since leaving hospital.

Rankin unveils portraits of NHS workers on the coronavirus frontline

Show all 12