When a senior figure in the government contacted a member of Boris Johnson’s family on Thursday to celebrate the prime minister’s release from intensive care, they responded with an affectionate joke about his timely resurrection: “He is risen.”

A week earlier, when cabinet ministers first predicted that Easter would be the crunch time for the coronavirus crisis, they had no idea that Johnson’s own life would be on the line as well as the future of the country.

The prime minister is keeping his mind occupied with sudoku number puzzles, preparation perhaps for what lies ahead. This weekend his government is engaged in a gigantic data-gathering exercise in an effort to work out when and how Britain can move from the lockdown to something resembling