CARDIFF — Two police officers stand outside a featureless low-rise building, set back from the ring road behind a chain link fence. It’s the only signal to passers-by that anything unusual is happening at the Mercure Hotel, whose typical guests are hen parties, French rugby fans and business conferences. But it’s here, three miles north of Cardiff, that decisions made by the Welsh government during the Covid pandemic are being scrutinised at oddly breakneck speed.
The Mercure Hotel itself was refurbished in December 2019, only to spend much of the next year vacant: three months after it reopened, Britain’s hospitality sector was shut down entirely save for the few sites used to quarantine travellers. Four years on, more than 12,000 people have died from Covid in Wales.
