PM Johnson 'getting better' in intensive care as UK extends overdraft

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was getting better on Thursday in intensive care where he is battling COVID-19 as his government extended its overdraft facility and reviewed the most stringent shut down in peacetime history.

Johnson, 55, was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital on Sunday evening with a persistent high temperature and cough and was rushed to intensive care on Monday. He has received oxygen support but has not been put on a ventilator.

“Things are getting better for him,” his culture minister Oliver Dowden said on Thursday. “He’s stable, improving, sat up and engaged with medical staff.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said Johnson appeared to be doing “better” after what he described as a “tough bout”.

With a prime minister in intensive care, the British government was facing two major issues: how to finance a vast increase in state spending to support the shuttered economy and the timing of lifting lockdown measures.

As the world’s fifth largest economy faces potentially the worst economic hit since World War Two amid soaring spending, the government said it had expanded its overdraft facility with the Bank of England.

The Bank of England has agreed temporarily to finance government borrowing in response to COVID-19 if funds cannot immediately be raised from debt markets, reviving a measure last used to any significant degree during the 2008 financial crisis.

The government and BoE said any borrowing from the Ways and Means facility - effectively the government’s overdraft with the BoE - would be repaid by the end of the year.

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