United Kingdom’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock stepped down from his position after revelations that he breached the government’s COVID-19 curbs during an affair with a close aide.

Hancock wrote a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to quit the National Health Services and emphasised on a previously issued apology. 

He wrote, “We owe it to people who have sacrificed so much on this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down as I have done by breaching the guidance”, reported AFP.

Following the announcement, Hancock also released a video on Twitter where he thanked the authorities and people of the UK for a fast COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

He also said, “Those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them, and that’s why I’ve got to resign.”

UK PM Johnson, in response to the resignation, said, Hancock “should leave office very proud of what you have achieved – not just in tackling the pandemic, but even before COVID-19 struck us”, reported BBC.

The frontman for Britain’s response to the pandemic has been under increasing pressure to renounce his position after The Sun newspaper released photographs of him kissing his close aide Gina Coladangelo in his Whitehall office.