Dominic Cummings' coronavirus 'prediction' claim undermined after it emerges he secretly edited blog post

Dominic Cummings replied indignantly when reporters suggested he had shown a cavalier attitude towards coronavirus and lockdown.

"For years, I have warned of the dangers of pandemics," he insisted during his appearance in Downing Street's rose garden. "Last year I wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses and the urgent need for planning."

However, Mr Cummings' claim to have predicted the pandemic was not strictly true, Downing Street admitted on Tuesday night.

In fact, sources confirmed that the Prime Minister's top aide secretly edited a year-old post on his personal blog last month to add a warning about coronaviruses.

MPs immediately accused Mr Cummings of misleading the nation by falsely making it appear that he had long warned about coronaviruses, and had always taken Covid-19 seriously.

Downing Street defended the Prime Minister's chief adviser, however, pointing out that he had previously "drawn attention" to the threat from pandemic diseases.

Mr Cummings' claim began to unravel within hours of his Rose Garden appearance. Social media users quickly found online clues strongly suggesting that he had quietly edited a year-old blog post to insert a reference to coronavirus at 8:55pm on April 14, the day he returned to work at Downing Street and two days after he visited Barnard Castle with his wife and child.

The blog post, published on Mr Cummings' WordPress blog on March 4, 2019, cited research by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on how security flaws in scientific laboratories working with dangerous pathogens could lead to a "global pandemic".

However a section from the same paper – only added last month – discusses an incident in which two Sars coronavirus researchers in China accidentally triggered a small breakout of the virus in 2004.

"Two researchers conducting virus research were exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) coronavirus samples that were incompletely inactivated," Mr Cummings' article now says. "The researchers subsequently transmitted Sars to others, leading to several infections and one death."

The post goes on to suggest that the UK Government should explore the use of "honey traps" to improve security at British labs.

No other mentions of "coronavirus" appear on Mr Cummings' website. Other blog posts later re-edited by him show "Updated" in the title. This one did not.

MPs accused Mr Cummings of deliberately misleading the British public by pretending he had warned of the threat of coronavirus before it arrived in the UK.

"This is another lie that Cummings told to the British people at the press conference," said Wera Hobhouse, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath.

The Labour peer Lord Adonis said: "The saga of Mr Cummings rewriting his blogs to claim he warned about [coronavirus] pandemics, when he didn't, is I suspect just the first of many things he said yesterday which will unravel."

Downing Street would not elaborate on Mr Cummings' reasons for inserting the new section on April 14.

Three weeks earlier, he had been accused of cheerleading the controversial "herd immunity" strategy adopted in the early stages of the outbreak and certain to be a focus for any public inquiry.

An anonymous source quoted in the Sunday Times on March 22 summarised Mr Cummings' thinking as: "Herd immunity, protect the economy and, if that means some pensioners die, too bad."

The story caused a sensation on social media, despite being furiously denied by Downing Street, which claimed the quotes were "invented".

During his Monday press conference, Mr Cummings repeatedly insisted he had always taken coronavirus seriously and had long warned of the need to plan for a pandemic.

His decision to insert a warning about lab accidents in China also came on the day that a group of senior Tory MPs accused the Chinese government of a "cover-up" over Covid-19. That week, US government sources also claimed to have evidence that coronavirus had escaped from a Wuhan lab.

Mr Cummings has long used his personal blog to criticise the "bloated" machinery of government. Last year he posted an advert for "weirdos and misfits with odd skills" to work in Number Ten.

A Downing Street spokesman said his original post did include a link to an article which discussed coronaviruses and from which the added quote was taken.

"Mr Cummings has warned about the dangers of pandemics for years and the urgent need for planning," the spokesman said. "In his blog post of March last year, he drew attention to an important story in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about natural and engineered pandemics including coronaviruses."