BORIS Johnson has said he is “deeply sorry” for the loss of life from Coronavirus as deaths across the UK passed 100,000, but insisted his Government “did everything we could”.

With the Office National Statistics confirming the “grim statistic”, the Prime Minister offered his deepest condolences to the families affected. 

However, hosting a Downing Street press conference, he deflected questions about why the UK’s death toll was so high and what he could have done differently.

Mr Johnson, who is due to visit Scotland on Thursday to hail the vaccine roll-out as a strength of the Union, said: “I think on this day I should just really repeat that I am deeply sorry for every life that has been lost, and of course as I was Prime Minister I take full responsibility for everything that the government has done.

“What I can tell you is that we truly did everything we could, and continue to do everything that we can, to minimise loss of life and to minimise suffering in what has been a very, very difficult stage, and a very, very difficult crisis for our country, and we will continue to do that.”

Referring to the 100,000 deaths, Mr Johnson said it was “hard to compute the sorrow contained in that grim statistic: the years of life lost, the family gatherings not attended and for so many relatives the missed chance to even say goodbye”.

He said “you would exhaust the thesaurus of misery” in trying to describe the figure, adding: “It’s an appalling and tragic loss of life, there’s no question about it.”

However pressed on what he could have done differently, he fell back on his prepared formula.

He said: “We did everything that we could be minimise suffering and minimise loss of life in this country as a result of the pandemic, and I’m deeply sorry for every life lost.”

According to the UK Government’s count of people dying within 28 days of testing positive for Covid, there were another 1,631 deaths reported on Tuesday, taking the total to 100,162.

The chief medical officer for England, Professor Chris Whitty, added: “Unfortunately, we are going to see quite a lot more deaths over the next few weeks.”

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Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the PM had been “behind the curve at every stage” and shown a “reluctance to take tough decisions” throughout the crisis.

He cited the current cabinet split over border controls as the latest example of dithering.

While some in his cabinet would like all international travellers to the UK forced to quarantine in hotels, Mr Johnson is understood to favour a more limited plan covering travellers arriving from hot-spots for aggressive new strains of Covid, such as Brazil and South Africa.

Sir Keir said: “It’s very clear that we need to have quarantine comprehensively in hotels for everybody coming into the country, we need much stronger defences at our borders. 

“We were one of the slowest countries to take any measures on our borders.”

He said: "There’s a strong sense I think that our Government has been behind the curve at every stage [of this] national tragedy.

“There has been a reluctance to take tough decisions when they needed to be taken.

“And here we are today we find ourselves with this awful milestone of 100,000 deaths from Covid.”

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Sir Keir rejected the assertion that Mr Johnson was adequately weighing the interests of public health against the need to keep the nation’s finances afloat, arguing the UK ended 2020 with the highest death toll in Europe and one of the deepest recessions of any major economy.

“And therefore the argument that the Prime Minister was carefully balancing one against the other simply doesn’t work,” Sir Keir said.