"I share this frustration about PPE and the frustration that I think people have felt across the House and across the country. It’s been enraging to see the difficulties that we’ve had in supplying PPE to those who need it," he said in parliament.
Johnson, who answered lawmakers' questions for the first time since falling ill with COVID-19 in April, praised "hundreds of thousands" of people involved in the logistics of supplying billions of PPE items across the country.
"There have been no national stockouts of any PPE item and we are now engaged in a massive plan to ramp up domestic supply," he added.
The government said last week that 49 frontline health care workers had died in the country since the start of the outbreak, but the Guardian newspaper said the number of deaths was likely several times higher.
