Boris Johnson says his health deteriorated so badly after contracting coronavirus that a strategy was drawn up in case he died.
Mr Johnson had been diagnosed with coronavirus on March 26 and was admitted to hospital 10 days later. The following day, he was moved to intensive care.
The prime minister revealed he was given "litres and litres of oxygen" after going into intensive care with Covid-19 on April 7.
Mr Johnson said: "It was a tough old moment, I won't deny it. They had a strategy to deal with a 'death of Stalin'-type scenario.
He added: "I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place," he said.
"The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong."
The total number of reported coronavirus-related deaths in the UK now stands at 28,131 - an increase of 621 on Friday's figure. The number of people who have died in after testing positive for coronavirus in Scotland has risen by 44 to 1,559.
He says his week in London's St Thomas' Hospital left him driven by a desire to both stop others suffering and to get the UK "back on its feet".
Earlier, his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, revealed they had named their baby boy Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson.
In an interview with the Sun on Sunday, Mr Johnson also spoke openly about how he was "in denial" about how serious it was when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the end of March.
"I said I really didn't want to go into hospital," he explained.
"It didn't seem to me to be a good move but they were pretty adamant. Looking back, they were right to force me to go."
Recalling what it was like when things got more serious after he was moved to intensive care, Mr Johnson said: "I was just incredibly frustrated.
"Because the bloody indicators kept going in the wrong direction and I thought, 'There's no medicine for this thing and there's no cure.'
"That was the stage when I was thinking, 'How am I going to get out of this?'"
His recovery, he says, was down to "wonderful, wonderful nursing".
Mr Johnson says he felt "lucky", given so many others were still suffering, adding: "And so if you ask me, 'Am I driven by a desire to stop other people suffering?' Yes, I absolutely am.
"But I am also driven by an overwhelming desire to get our country as a whole back on its feet, healthy again, going forward in a way that we can and I'm very confident we'll get there."
Mr Johnson returned to work on Monday and was immediately faced with preparing for the coronavirus lockdown review due to be announced by Thursday 7 May.
He is expected to lay out the UK's approach to tackling "phase two" of the virus now the peak of infections has passed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel