French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Angela Merkel with Namaste

Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the entire world is maintaining strict social distancing measures. Now, world leaders are also showing how social distancing measures can be maintained when they meet. Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron has used the traditional Indian ‘namaste’, instead of the usual handshake, while he welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It happened when Macron received Angela Merkel at his Mediterranean holiday retreat, the Fort of Bregancon on August 20. During the meeting, the French President leaned forward and greeted Merkel with folded hands, and the German lady too reciprocated the action.

Later, the two world leaders discussed several International matters that include the ways to curb the coronavirus pandemic, and the elevating tensions in Turkey.

It should be noted that it was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who initially propagated the idea of greeting each other using namaste, during the coronavirus pandemic. Later, several world leaders followed his path, and as per the latest reports, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently asked the citizens of the country to embrace the namaste greeting style to stay away from the coronavirus pandemic.

The novel coronavirus that originated from Wuhan has already killed more than 7,97,000 people worldwide, and the number of infected people has crossed 22 million. In India alone, there are more than 2.9 million coronavirus positive cases, and the death toll has already crossed 50,000.

The United States continues to be the country most affected by coronavirus with more than 5.7 million positive cases, and 1,77,000 deaths.

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