Boris Johnson was warned by his top No10 aide Dominic Cummings that lockdown may be needed in London to stop the NHS in the capital “collapsing” within days.

The then Prime Minister was told that hospitals in the capital could run out of intensive care beds in as little as nine days as the Covid virus swept through the city in March 2020.

A “full curfew” in the capital was considered to safeguard Londoners.

Details of fraught meetings at the heart of Government on how to protect London, which had been hardest hit by coronavirus with the rest of the country a week or two behind, were laid out in the Covid Inquiry’s report into how the Government handled the crisis.

Chaos at the heart of government and a failure to take Covid-19 seriously cost 23,000 lives in the first wave of

See Full Page