A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the German leader denies invitation from US President Donald Trump to attend the G7 summit over fears from coronavirus outbreak.
"Given the general situation of the pandemic, it is not possible to accept her participation personally," Steven Seiffer said. He noted that the Chancellor refuses to go personally to Washington to attend the meeting of the Group of Seven major industrialized countries.
Merkel, who specializes mainly in science, is the first official to formally reject the invitation to attend G7, which includes Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
The data of the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases in Germany showed an increase in the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus by 738, bringing the total to 181196 cases. The Institute's statistics also showed that the number of registered deaths increased by 39, to reach to 8489 deaths.
The White House had announced in mid-March that it had abandoned, due to the epidemic, the plans of holding the meeting in the presence of heads of state and government at the presidential residence in Camp David, in the neighboring state of Maryland, indicating that it would prefer to conduct it through the closed circuit.
But President Trump announced last week that the summit would take place in June "at the largest part of the White House", although some meetings would take place at Camp David.
Trump hopes to win a second presidential term in the elections to be held on the third of November, and for this he wants the summit of the G7, with the attendance of the leaders, to become a symbol of the normalization of the situation he desires most, unlike the stopping of economic activity, whose electoral costs could be very large.
The first reactions of the leaders of the seven countries to Trump's call were cautious. French President Emmanuel Macron and European Council President Charles Michel have confirmed that they are ready to participate "if the health conditions allow this."
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