Luxembourg Prime Minister, 48, is hospitalised with Covid ‘as a precaution’ after testing positive

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel was hospitalised Sunday and will be kept under observation as tests are carried out a week after he tested positive for Covid-19, the government said.

Bettel, 48, is to stay in hospital for 24 hours as a precautionary measure, the statement said.

He began 10 days of self isolation on June 27, less than two days after attending a European Union summit in Brussels, but none of the other 26 EU leaders who attended the summit were considered a contact case.

The Luxembourg premier had already received one dose of the AstraZeneca covid vaccine on May 6.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel was hospitalised Sunday and will be kept under observation as tests are carried out a week after he tested positive for Covid-19, the government said 

The country of 630,000 inhabitants has seen a surge of infections in the past 10 days, and 136 people tested positive for the coronavirus on Saturday, a level last seen in Luxembourg in mid-May.

It was during the European Union summit in Brussels that Bettel told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban he had ‘crossed a red line’ with a new law banning LGBT content in the country’s schools.  

Bettel, the only openly gay leader at a summit of EU leaders, was among those who launched blistering attacks on Orban over the new legislation. 

He said the Hungarian law further stigmatises homosexuals and should be fought. He said Orban had ‘crossed a red line’.

‘To be nationally blamed, to be considered as not normal, to be considered as a danger for young people – it’s not realising that being gay is not a choice,’ Bettel said.

It was during the European Union summit in Brussels that Bettel told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (pictured) he had ‘crossed a red line’ with a new law banning LGBT content in the country’s schools 

‘But being intolerant is a choice. I would stay intolerant to intolerance and this would be today my fight… I am going to tell him that what he is doing in his country is intolerant and that being gay is not a choice.’

The EU is pushing Orban to revoke the law and threatened legal action against Budapest for violating fundamental democratic rules. Bettel recounted his own experience coming to terms with his sexuality. 

‘The most difficult thing for me was to accept myself when I realised that I was in love with a person of my sex, was how to say to my parents, how to say to my family,’ he said, stressing that young homosexuals are prone to suicide if they fail to embrace who they are, come out and live their lives.

Conflating homosexuality with paedophilia or pornography was wrong, as was stigmatizing people, he said, adding tongue-in-cheek that himself being gay did not pose any danger to anyone.

‘I didn’t get up one morning after having seen an advert on the TV of some brand… That’s not how life works. It’s in me, I didn’t choose it. And to accept oneself is hard enough, so to be stigmatised too that’s too much.