Covid outbreak among Indian delegates disrupts G7 summit
Dominic Raab stood on the stairs of Lancaster House in London on Tuesday evening and declared: “Diplomacy is back.”
For the first time in more than two years, G7 ministers had spent a day talking with their counterparts face to face. Yet Boris Johnson was forced yesterday (Wednesday) to defend the Government’s decision to hold the talks in person after a Covid outbreak threw the summit into chaos.
India’s Foreign Minister was forced to pull out of physically attending discussions after two members of his delegation tested positive late on Tuesday, just as the Foreign Secretary was hailing the talks as a success.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and his team had already met Priti Patel at the Home Office and Antony
Blinken, the US secretary of state, earlier in the week, sparking fears of an outbreak at the summit which was meant to demonstrate that international diplomacy can get back to normal ahead of the full G7 summit in Cornwall next month.
Government sources, however, insisted that the early detection of cases in the Indian delegation, which saw the nation’s entire travelling party enter self-isolation, showed that Covid protocols put in place for the Lancaster House talks were working. None of the Indian party had attended the summit venue itself, sources insisted.
The cases were picked up during daily tests carried out by Public Health England, who later advised that the UK and US representatives did not need to self-isolate because talks with the Indians had been suitably socially distanced.
Jaishankar and his small delegation arrived in the UK on Monday, and were exempted from quarantine rules requiring travellers from red list countries to quarantine for 10 days.
The summit took place as planned, with Jaishankar taking part remotely.
He is understood to have received two doses of the vaccine against coronavirus and did not test positive himself.
However, politicians and academics questioned why the Indian team had been allowed to enter the UK without being required to quarantine, given the country has become “ground zero” for the pandemic in recent weeks.
India is not a member of the G7 — made up of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — but is one of four additional nations invited to participate in the talks as a guest. India’s invitation was thought to partly reflect British foreign policy priorities, as talks accelerate on a post-brexit trade deal.
— Telegraph Media Group