
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is still recuperating from COVID-19, has the biggest challenge of his life to deal with -- how to lift a lockdown that is destroying swathes of the British economy without triggering a deadly second wave of the outbreak.
Johnson is on the mend at his country residence after spending three nights in intensive care at a London hospital earlier this month with COVID-19 complications.
As the prime minister is preparing to return to work on Monday, he is under pressure to explain just how and when the world's fifth largest economy will exit the crippling lockdown.
Britain had already been under fire for its limited testing capacity and for failing to deliver enough personal protective equipment to front-line health workers.
The United Kingdom has the fifth worst official death toll in the world, after the United States, Italy, Spain and France, and government scientists have said that the death rate will only start to decline quickly in a another couple of weeks.
According to the country's budget forecasters, the economy could be heading into its deepest recession in more than 300 years even after the finance ministry and the Bank of England rushed out a string of emergency stimulus measures.