We joined our RS tour on 5/9 in Chartres; there were 25 of us, plus our excellent guide Virginie.
Our first Covid case occurred a few days later; the wife was tested positive, so she and her husband left the tour.
A couple of days later, our guide was tested positive, so she had to leave the tour in Sarlat, where we went on with a new tour guide for the day. One of our couples decided to leave the tour because they didn't want to risk not being able to return to the US, which requires a negative Covid test in order to board a flight home.
Now it's been a few more days and we are down to 12 remaining participants out of 25, and are on our 5th tour guide (yes, 5!). We lost two more couples this morning, and we're all so worried now that more will fall before we fly out 3 days from now. My brother and his wife were on the trip with us; they got left behind in Carcasonne when she tested positive, and another guy had to remain behind as well.
Would I have gone on this trip if I'd known so many of us would test positive? Nope. The confined space of the bus for hours at a time, combined with lots of nights where we dined together in various configurations, has made this such a mess. The spread seems to be random; spouses aren't getting it--so far no spouse has caught it from his or her partner; most of the positive cases are women. The gallows humor has started, as we all wonder who's next and whether we'll make it to the end.
My wife and I had Covid in early February, are double-vaccinated and double-boosted (as are almost all of our group); we wonder if having had it so recently has given us enough antibodies to not catch it yet.
Getting home is the big problem; if these couples can't get a negative test by Friday morning, when most of us are scheduled to fly home, they have to stay, and change their flights. Meanwhile, we continue to mask on the bus and in confined spaces, and just hope that we don't test positive on Thursday before our flights home.
If you're scheduled to travel soon, you should know the possibility of this happening in your tour group; we certainly never imagined this happening, but we're in the middle of it, and it's a mess.
On a positive note, RSE is helping as best they can. One of the big issues is that some of our couples have had to remain behind in small towns, with little options for getting themselves back to Paris for flights home. My brother and his wife are still in Carcasonne because there were no trains available until tomorrow...