Isabel II. /
The Monarch has become ill after her direct contact with her eldest son and heir, Carlos, was confirmed.
Carlos, Camila…, finally, also Queen Elizabeth. Buckingham Palace confirmed this Sunday that the British monarch has tested positive for Covid-19. She had feared for her health since the middle of the month, when her heir, Prince Charles, caught the virus for the second time since the official start of the pandemic in the UK two years ago. Earlier that week she had visited her mother at Windsor Castle, her favorite residence near central London and her almost permanent abode in recent times.
The queen had “mild symptoms, like a cold” when the infection was announced and will be under medical observation, according to her spokesmen. However, she will continue to carry out “light tasks” from her official schedule at the more leisurely pace that she has adopted in the last quarter. Isabel II turns 96 in April and has suffered a series of ailments throughout the winter, including hospitalization for one night, which forced him to temporarily suspend her public activities. Even so, during the convalescence of a diagnosis that was not made public, she participated in events by electronic connection.
“Well, you see, I can’t move,” he told a recent visitor, pointing to his leg and the cane that supports him. It was the first face-to-face audience in a long season that the sovereign attended in Windsor. Prince Charles and his grandson William, among other family members, share routine state functions, such as investitures or diplomatic receptions. She has rarely attended an official event alone since the death of her husband Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in 2021.
Elizabeth celebrates this year the 70th anniversary of her reign, the Platinum Jubilee. The positive for covid has once again triggered fears that it will be necessary to cancel part of the celebration program, which ranges from popular festivals in June to meetings with representatives of other monarchies, including the Spanish, and religious services.
The palace announcement coincides with the planned publication, this Monday 21, of the Government’s strategy “to live with covid”. The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, advanced in Parliament his intention to lift all the legal rules that have been imposed to date to contain the spread of the original virus and its contagious variants, such as the delta, initially detected in England, and the ómicron, which is still active throughout the country. On Saturday, 34,277 cases of coronavirus were registered and a cumulative total of 317,293 in seven days, with a decrease of 24.6% compared to the previous week.
Johnson intends to abolish the quarantine for people who, like the queen, contract covid. It is one of the few legal restrictions still in force and its elimination is opposed by scientists from the WHO, as well as doctors and academics located in the United Kingdom. The opposition also considers it “premature” to lift the requirement that allows those infected not to go to work, school or the supermarket during the first five days of the result. The end of free tests is also mentioned among the likely controversial measures of the conservative president’s new plan to say goodbye to the pandemic.
