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Italian newspaper reports claim Boris Johnson was holidaying in Perugia on September 11
Prime minister Boris Johnson. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire.
An Italian newspaper has claimed that Boris Johnson took a trip to Perugia in mid-September as coronavirus infections rose.
A statement from the city’s airport, reported in La Repubblica, said Johnson was in Perugia “over the past few days”, and a source told the newspaper that the prime minister “arrived on Friday September 11 at 2pm and left on Monday September 14 at 7.45”.
But Downing Street said the story was “completely untrue” and Johnson had not travelled to Italy “in recent months”.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps claimed the story was “mistaken, as far as I’m aware”.
But he added: “I don’t track his movements by the hour”.
A Number 10 spokesman said: “This story is completely untrue. The prime minister has not travelled to Italy in recent months.
“Anyone who publishes these claims is repeating a falsehood.”
Johnson last took a holiday in August when he took his partner Carrie Symonds to the “north-west coast of Scotland”.
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