On Monday, three days before his office said he had tested positive for COVID-19, Macron greeted OECD chief Angel Gurria with a warm hand clasp in the Elysee palace courtyard.
Paris: When an early adopter of the Covid confirmation ‘namaste’ welcoming, French President Emmanuel Macron was giving indications of giving his guard down right around a year access to the pandemic.
On Monday, three days before his office said he had tried positive for COVID-19, Macron welcomed OECD chief Angel Gurria with a warm hand fasten in the Elysee royal residence patio, pulling the 70-year-old into a free grasp, a ThirdEyeNews picture shows.
They were wearing masks, yet Macron broke his government’s no.1 pandemic standard: stick to what the French call “barrier gestures” and keep away from handshakes, much kisses.
“You know them, they save lives: barrier gestures are not an option!” Macron said in a tweet on July 12.
His office perceived Macron had made an “unfortunate” botch in shaking Gurria’s hand. “It’s a mistake, he had this gesture, there is no denying it,” an official told ThirdEyeNews, adding that the president was in any case continually washing his hands and requesting that visitors do likewise.
Macron was in every case material before the pandemic, imparting embraces to leaders like U.S. President Donald Trump and kissing and patting members of the public on the back.
In the recent weeks, the French leader fist-bumped EU counterparts at a summit in Brussels and welcomed EU chief Charles Michel and Spanish leader Pedro Sanchez at the Elysee with congratulations and elbows, TV film shows.
Presently Sanchez, Michel and Gurria are self-isolating..
Macron additionally facilitated a lunch at the Elysee on Tuesday with around 20 parliamentary leaders and feasted with twelve officials on Wednesday, parliamentary sources stated, regardless of his administration suggesting close to six visitors at the table during end-of-year occasions.
That diverged from his cautious after of social-distancing guidelines prior in the pandemic.
In March, days before he put the country on lockdown, he supplanted the conventional handshake with the Indian-style namaste when he welcomed Spain’s king and queen in Paris, squeezing his palms together and bowing somewhat.
He rehashed the namaste welcoming with Britain’s Prince Charles on June 18 and kept up social distance outside 10 Downing Street with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Yet, on October 28, when he declared a subsequent lockdown, he included himself among the individuals who had let social distancing slip.
“We should all have respected barrier gestures more, especially with family and friends,” he said on TV. “Is now the time for regrets?”
