Dominic Cummings collapsed and was in bed for 10 days after contracting coronavirus, wife reveals

Dominic Cummings caught Covid-19 around the same time as Boris Johnson.

Dominic Cummings collapsed and was confined to bed for 10 days with severe breathlessness after contracting the coronavirus, his wife has revealed.

Boris Johnson's chief adviser contracted the deadly illness at around the same time as the Prime Minister, but little was known about how badly affected he had been.

Writing in The Spectator, Mary Wakefield said her husband should have been hospitalised when his symptoms worsened.

She said Mr Cummings had "rushed home" when she first showed signs of having contracted the bug.

"He’s an extremely kind man, whatever people assume to the contrary,” she wrote. "But 24 hours later, he said ‘I feel weird’ and collapsed.

"I felt breathless, sometimes achy, but Dom couldn’t get out of bed. Day in, day out for 10 days he lay doggo with a high fever and spasms that made the muscles lump and twitch in his legs. He could breathe, but only in a limited, shallow way."

After a week, Ms Wakefield said the stricken paid had reached "peak corona uncertainty".

She added: "I was told: that’s when you either get better or head for ICU. But was Dom fighting off the bug or was he heading for a ventilator? Who knew?

"I sat on his bed staring at his chest, trying to count his breaths per minute.

"The little oxygen reader we’d bought on Amazon indicated that he should be in hospital, but his lips weren’t blue and he could talk in full sentences, such as: 'Please stop staring at my chest, sweetheart'."

Mr Cummings finally returned to work last week, while Mr Johnson is continuing his recovery at Chequers.

In a short article accompanying his wife's, Mr Cummings described his home environment as "sticky" as the couple fought the illness while trying to look after their four-year-old son, Ceddy.

"Everything is covered in a layer of spilt Ribena, honey, peanut butter and playschool glue," he wrote.

"I have to talk a lot more at work than I like — I like quiet. Being with Mary in lockdown means I think I am talking all day and Mary thinks she’s starved of conversation.

"But I like listening to her and our four-year-old. They bicker like an old married couple and discuss what the birds are thinking."