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Trump cancels G7 summit in June
Status: 20.03.2020 04:44 a.m.
US President Trump has canceled the G7 summit planned for June at Camp David because of the corona virus. Instead,
there will be video conferencing. There has been a curfew in California since night.
US President Donald Trump canceled the June G7 summit in the United States because of the coronavirus pandemic. The heads of state and government of the seven industrialized nations should instead confer via video, the White House said. The meeting with Germany, Great Britain, Canada, France, Italy and Japan was supposed to take place at the Camp David military base in the state of Maryland.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said economic adviser Larry Kudlow had informed his colleagues of the changes to allow each country to focus "all of its resources on responding to the health and economic challenges" posed by the virus.
Trump spoke to the G7 leaders on Monday at the instigation of French President Emmanuel Macron. The US president, who holds the G7 presidency this year, now wants to hold virtual meetings of this kind every month, Deere said.
Many countries around the world have introduced travel restrictions and called on the population to keep their distance in order to slow the spread of the virus. How long these measures will take is not yet clear.
California became the first US state to curfew in the evening due to the corona crisis. To curb the virus, the 40 million inhabitants of the most populous state are likely to leave their homes for urgent reasons, Governor Gavin Newsoms said. He pointed to a model calculation according to which 56 percent of the residents would develop Covid-19 in the next eight weeks. This would require almost 20,000 more hospital beds than the state can currently provide.
Newsom also asked President Donald Trump to send an announced Navy hospital ship to Los Angeles immediately, as California had to prepare for an increase in infections. Los Angeles, the second largest US city, is likely to be hit particularly hard by the pandemic in the coming weeks.
US warns citizens of overseas travel The US government has advised its citizens against international travel because of the corona virus. She called on Americans not to go abroad and return home under any circumstances unless they were planning to stay abroad.
"In countries where commercial departure options are still available, US citizens living in the United States should arrange their immediate return trip to the United States unless they are preparing to stay abroad for an undefined period of time US citizens living abroad should avoid all unnecessary international travel, "said the State Department statement.
