Boris Johnson has avoided answering questions on Dominic Cummings’s explosive allegations – but suggested some claims were not based on reality.

Mr Johnson sidestepped questions about the claims – including that he is not fit to be PM – during a visit to a hospital on Thursday by saying he was “getting on with the job of delivering the roadmap”.

He did not say whether he has confidence in Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who took much of Mr Cummings’s flak, but said: “I think some of the commentary I’ve heard doesn’t bear any relation to reality.”

Mr Johnson did not say which of the claims he was referring to.

Follow live COVID updates and reaction to Dominic Cummings’ allegations

Asked whether tens of thousands of people needlessly died because of him, which Mr Cummings claimed, Mr Johnson said: “No I don’t think so.

“But of course, this has been an incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we’ve taken lightly, and you’ve got to recognise, and I hope people do understand this, that when you go into a lockdown it’s a very, very painful, traumatic thing for people, for people’s mental health, for their lives, their livelihoods, and of course you’ve got to set that against the horrors of the pandemic and of COVID.”

Mr Cummings said Mr Hancock lied about testing people returning to care homes last year, with Mr Johnson saying what happened “was tragic”.

“But we did everything we could to protect the NHS, to minimise transmission, with the knowledge that we had,” he added.

“One thing we did not know at the beginning of the pandemic, and don’t forget this – we did not know at the beginning of the pandemic quite the way which the virus could be transmitted asymptomatically, and that was one of the reasons that we had some of the problems that we saw in care homes.”

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