YOUNG people are to blame for the spike in Covid cases in G7 hosting areas and not the summit itself, Cornwall Council's public health consultant has said.

In an interview with BBC Radio Cornwall this morning, Dr Ruth Goldstein told presenter James Churchfield that while cases have 'really spiralled' up in the last two and a bit weeks, it was the 18 to 29 year old group where most of the cases were.

"Because we get a chance to actually investigate a lot of our cases we have been identifying that a lot of the people who are testing positive in the last couple of weeks are people associated with the hospitality industry businesses across Cornwall," she said. "At some of our real tourist hotspots. That's where it really started, and now it's starting to spread out.

"We know with Covid that it is very sociable it likes where people mix, it likes indoor small spaces. We know that we get people into these hospitality venues and it is predominantly young people who are working in the hospitality venues, they are the ones who are unvaccinated and unfortunately those are the ones at the moment succumbing to the virus. So vaccination is really important."

There has been a huge spike in cases in Falmouth, St Ives and Newquay since the G7 summit was held with thousands of people taking part descending on the areas.

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Dr Goldstein said that during the G7 summit really rigorous testing regimes were in place and you couldn't attend any of the meetings unless you'd been tested and could demonstrate you were negative each day from an LFD test.

"I find it quite hard to believe in all honesty that this is the G7 effect," she said. "We can track back to just before G7, the week before G7, and that is when our numbers started to go up. This new Delta variant is far more to do with the spread than anything else. I really don't believe this is the G7 effect."

She said despite protestors not being tested, they were no different from any of the other visitors to Cornwall and in relation to them were a really very small number. She said she had gone through the data but could find no definite link to G7.

But former Helston and St Ives MP and now Cornwall councillor Andrew George said the the correlation between G7 and the 'tsunami' of Covid case-load in St Ives/Carbis Bay and Falmouth is 'undeniable'.

"It ought to drive public bodies to at the very least maintain an open mind about the connection between the two. But Cornwall’s Council’s Conservative Health Chief has already declared that 'G7 is not the cause of this new spike'.

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"Such attempts to prematurely deny the possibility that the G7 summit was a significant cause of this outbreak undermines confidence in those charged with responsibility for protecting public health, and gives rise to concerns that public bodies are being used to buttress a partisan driven cover-up; to protect the Conservatives from criticism for a – what could have been – cavalier decision not to hold the event online to protect public health."

He is calling on the government to publish its Covid G7 Covid risk assessment or share it with councillors.

The leader of the Labour group in Cornwall, Cllr Jayne Kirkham is calling for a vaccination centre to be set up in Falmouth to try sand combat the rise in cases.