Special Envoy to Cornwall
The first face-to-face summit for two years, the G7 meeting, which is held until Sunday in Cornwall, in the South West of England, is surrounded by drastic precautions against Covid.
Vaccination may be at the heart of discussions among leaders, Boris Johnson boasts of being a champion of vaccination, with more than 75% of the UK population having received a first injection, with visitors vaccinated from overseas. do not cut it.
All participants must adhere to a draconian regimen of testing.
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Exceptionally exempt from the ten-day quarantine in force for entering the United Kingdom, delegates - including in theory heads of state and government - must be provided with a negative PCR test of less than 72 hours.
But they are not at the end of their sentences.
When they arrive in Cornwall, they must do another PCR and, pending its result, a rapid antigen test.
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A new self-administered antigen test should be performed each morning before leaving your hotel.
Cotton swab pressed into the throat (a local specificity) then the nostrils, two drops of a reagent on a tab ... and the result appears in a few minutes.
You should then record this result on the National Health Service website, which sends you an SMS with the result - based on the verdict communicated by the patient.
This message serves as a key to accessing the G7 sites.
In total, with a new PCR before departure, this represents a minimum of seven tests in a few days.
UK organizers are even asking participants to get tested again twice within a week of their return.
Cluster in a hotel
These precautions did not prevent a hotel in St Ives, a few kilometers from Carbis Bay, from receiving the order to close, Thursday, the day before the opening of the summit, after the discovery of a cluster.
There housed a German security and American media team.
Several hotel staff had tested positive.
Journalists from all over the world are kept at a safe distance from the leaders of the seven largest world powers (United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan): the press center is located in the seaside resort of Falmouth, 25 miles and an hour's drive from Carbis Bay, where their hotel is located.
With the security measures, monster traffic jams paralyze the small roads of Cornwall, a very touristy and humid region of England.
