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BREAKING: Boris Johnson leaves hospital as coronavirus recovery continues

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Boris Johnson walked out of St Thomas’ Hospital on Easter Sunday, and Downing Street says he’s not walking back into the office anytime soon.

Number 10 confirmed on April 12 that the Prime Minister had been discharged from St Thomas’ Hospital in London following his battle with COVID-19, ending a stay that included three nights in intensive care. Johnson, 55, will now continue his recovery at Chequers, his official country residence in Buckinghamshire, and his medical team has told him not to return to work immediately. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will keep deputising for him in the meantime.

• Johnson was admitted to St Thomas’ on April 5 after his symptoms worsened, following his initial positive diagnosis on March 27, and spent three nights in intensive care receiving oxygen support before moving back to a general ward on April 9.
• In a video message on his discharge, Johnson said the NHS saved his life “no question” and admitted the ordeal “could have gone either way,” singling out nurses Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal, who sat by his bedside for 48 critical hours.
• His discharge coincided with the UK surpassing 10,000 hospital coronavirus deaths, making it only the fourth European country to cross that threshold.

A Discharge That Doubled as a Warning

Johnson’s release from St Thomas’ landed as good news on Easter Sunday, but Downing Street was careful not to oversell it. Officials stressed the Prime Minister would not be resuming his duties immediately and would instead recuperate at Chequers under medical supervision. That caution reflects just how serious his illness became: what started as a self-isolation case on March 27 escalated to hospital admission on April 5, and then to three nights in the ICU once his condition deteriorated further.

Dominic Raab has been running the government’s day-to-day coronavirus response since Johnson’s hospitalization, and he continues in that role while the Prime Minister recovers away from Westminster. There is no set date for Johnson’s return, and Number 10 has left that call entirely in the hands of his doctors.

Johnson’s Own Account From the Ward

Johnson used a video message to describe what happened inside St Thomas’, crediting the National Health Service directly for pulling him through. He said the NHS had saved his life “no question” and was candid that his outcome “could have gone either way.” That kind of admission from a sitting Prime Minister, delivered on camera days after leaving intensive care, underlined just how close the situation had gotten.

“The reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching, and they were thinking, and they were caring, and making a difference at every stage.”

He named two nurses specifically — Jenny, who traveled from New Zealand, and Luis, from Portugal — who he said stayed by his bedside for 48 critical hours to make sure his body kept receiving enough oxygen. It’s the kind of detail that turned an abstract national crisis into a very personal debt for the Prime Minister.

The Toll Behind the Headline

Johnson’s discharge arrived on the same day the UK confirmed it had passed 10,000 hospital coronavirus deaths, putting Britain among just four European nations to reach that grim number at that point. The timing made his recovery feel less like a standalone piece of good news and more like a single bright data point inside a much darker national picture, one that outlets covering the broader spread of the virus had been tracking daily, as detailed in reporting on new coronavirus models predicting a jump in the death toll.

His partner, Carrie Symonds, who is pregnant, spoke publicly about how frightening the week had been, saying there were “times that were very dark indeed.” Her comments, paired with Johnson’s own admission about how close things came, gave the public a rare, unfiltered look at what the country’s own leader had just gone through — at the same moment the government was still asking every household to follow the same isolation rules that flattened his own case before it worsened, echoing steps taken elsewhere such as the measures covered in the White House’s own response after officials contracted the virus.

Future Outlook for Number 10

For now, Raab keeps chairing the morning coronavirus meetings and standing at the Downing Street podium, while Johnson recovers at Chequers with no timeline attached to his return. The next real marker to watch is whether his doctors clear him to resume Cabinet duties before the government’s next major decision on extending or easing the national lockdown — a call that, until he’s back, will fall to Raab and the rest of the Cabinet to make without him.