Matt Hancock's Covid book is officially a flop - with sales figures showing that it is no longer in the top 1,000. Matt Hancock's Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid was released in time for Christmas but has been slammed by reviewers.
The book, co-authored by political journalist Isabel Oakeshotte, was released on December 6. It entered the Neilson book charts at number 191 earlier this month, following the former England health secretary's appearance on ITV show I'm A Celebrity.
However his TV stint failed to translate to sales, the Mirror reports. Hancock, who will appear on an upcoming special episode of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, has been criticised for releasing the book ahead of any official inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic.
The diary purports to give “the inside story” from his perspective. It sees him defending his handling of one of the most controversial episodes of the pandemic – the decision to release care home residents from hospital without testing, which was blamed for thousands of deaths.
Mr Hancock also says in the book that he was warned the Covid pandemic could kill hundreds of thousands of people in the UK, two months before the Government put the country into lockdown. He said the chief medical officer for England Professor Sir Chris Whitty had informed him in January 2020 that in a “reasonable worst case scenario” as many as 820,000 could die.
The book was serialised in the Daily Mail and The Mail+. West Suffolk MP Mr Hancock now sits as an independent having had the Tory whip withdrawn for going to the Australian jungle for his I'm A Celebrity appearance.
