The COVID-19 coronavirus that has been one of the major, if not the major, occurrences and talking points of the year 2020, has proven that it has no respect for age or race. People of high and low social status alike have all been affected.
One of the latest people of high societal ranking to be lost to the brutal virus is former French President, Valery Giscard d’Estaing.
He died at the age of 94 at his home in the central French department of Loir-et-Cher on Wednesday from complications linked to COVID-19.
Giscard d’Estaing was President of France at the age of 48 from 1974 until 1981.
He lost the 1981 presidential election to Socialist Francois Mitterrand.
The deceased led France into the modern era and was a key architect of European integration in the early 1970s.
Before his death, Giscard was admitted for some months in hospital for heart problems.
He died “surrounded by his family” at the family home in the Loire region.