With the coronavirus outbreak more people including world leaders are preferring to greet each other with Namaste. The global leaders have ditched the handshake and are folding their hands in a 'Namaste'. The latest to add to the list of leaders who preferred Namaste over hand shake are France President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. The two European Union leaders met on Thursday to discuss travel restrictions related to the coronavirus.

Emmanuel Macron welcomed Angela Merkel for her first-ever visit to the presidential summer residence with a namaste. Here is the video.

Namaste is Global !

📸:When Emmanuel Macron, President of France and Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany greet each other with Namastepic.twitter.com/jHUhW2CfPY
— All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) August 20, 2020

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promoted the Namaste and said that the world was increasingly adopting the no-contact way of greeting.

The French ambassador to New Delhi, Emmanuel Lenain, had tweeted, “President Macron has decided to greet all his counterparts with a namaste, a graceful gesture that he has retained from his India visit in 2018.”

Président Macron has decided to greet all his counterparts with a namaste, a graceful gesture that he has retained from his India visit in 2018 pic.twitter.com/OksoKjW7V8
— Emmanuel Lenain (@FranceinIndia) March 11, 2020

Earlier, we have seen US President Donald Trump and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar greeting each other with the ‘namaste’ when they met at the White House. Trump said doing a quick demonstration of the Indian namaste that, "I just got back from India. And I did not shake any hands there, and it was very easy because they go like this."

A video of Prince Charles went viral on Twitter in which he offers his hand for and then suddenly greets with 'Namaste' at the Prince’s Trust Awards at the London Palladium. Here is the video.

Namaste 🙏🏻 🙏🏻

See we Indians told to do this to world many many years ago. Now just a class on ‘how to do namaste properly’. #CoronaVirus pic.twitter.com/P1bToirPin
— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) March 12, 2020

The Prime Minister of Israel urged all the Israelis to resort to the Indian ‘Namaste’ rather than a handshake to save themselves from the coronavirus infection.