A senior UK cabinet minister has claimed it is “grotesque” to suggest Boris Johnson “skipped” key COVID-19 meetings as the virus was taking hold.

It comes after a major report in The Sunday Times revealed that the UK Prime Minister did not attend five meetings of the COBRA national crisis committee in early days of the outbreak.

It notes that he spent a large portion of February at his country retreat in Chevening and did not attend a COBRA meeting on coronavirus until March 2nd.

The paper warns that the UK was woefully unprepared for the outbreak and missed a series of opportunities over the five weeks from late January to address serious shortages in PPE, ventilators and tests.

Cabinet Office Michael Gove arriving at 10 Downing Street to attend an emergency meeting, 07-04-2020. Image: Ray Tang/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images

Speaking to Sophie Ridge on Sunday on Sky News this morning, Cabinet Minister Michael Gove defended Mr Johnson.

“The idea that the prime minister skipped meetings that were vital to our response to the coronavirus, I think is grotesque

“The truth is that there are meetings across government, some of which are chaired by the health secretary, some of which are chaired by other ministers, but the prime minister took all the major decisions.

“I think that anyone who considered what happened to the prime minister not long ago, nobody can say the prime minister isn't throwing heart and soul into fighting this virus.

“His leadership has been inspirational at times and I think that actually nothing is more off-beam than the suggestion that the prime minister was anything other than energetic, determined, focused and strong in his leadership against this virus.”

The UK Prime Minister’s Cehquers Country Estate where Boris Johnson is currently recuperating from COVID-19, 13-04-2020. Image: Steve Parsons/PA Wire/PA Images

The Sunday Times article notes that ministers ignored dire warnings from scientists - and the UK lost a “crucial five weeks in the fight to tackle the dangerous threat of coronavirus despite being in a perilously poor state of preparation for a pandemic.”

Government whistle-blowers, scientists and emergency planners alleged there was a complacency at the heart of government in late January and February when it should have been urgently replenishing stockpiles.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Gove said it was not unusual for the prime minister to skip COBRA meetings.

He said the Sunday Times investigation had “one or two off-beam elements to it” but refused to say specifically what was incorrect.

“I won't go through here a point-by-point rebuttal of all the things in The Sunday Times story that are a little bit off-beam, but that will be done later,” he said.

File photo of then-Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth during a visit to Crawley Hospital, in West Sussex, 10-12-2019. Image: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire/PA Images

Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth said Mr Gove's “off-beam” response was “possibly the weakest rebuttal of a detailed expose in British political history.”

The shadow health secretary said Mr Johnson had “serious questions” to answer.

“We know that serious mistakes have been made, we know that our frontline NHS staff don't have the PPE [personal protective equipment], that they've been told this weekend that they won't necessarily have the gowns which are vital to keep them safe.

“We know that our testing capacity is not at the level that is needed.

“We know that the ventilators that many hospitals have received are the wrong types of ventilators and there are big questions as to whether we went into this lockdown too slowly, and now we hear the prime minister missed five meetings at the start of this outbreak

“It suggests that early on he was missing in action.”

There are now more than 114,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the UK.

More than 15,000 people have died in UK hospitals and the Government has not released any figures regarding deaths in the country’s residential care homes.