By Sylvania Ambani, Nairobi News
Tanzania President John Magufuli has come up with a new way of greeting people as a preventive measure to help curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Pictures shared by Tanzania media show President Magufuli exchanging a foot greeting with veteran politician Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad at State House.
Employees work to prevent coronavirus in South
Korea
In another picture, the two wave at each other while standing one metre apart.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), avoiding body contact mainly through a handshake is one of the measures a person can prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni last week urged Ugandans to stop shaking hands unnecessarily and take extra caution.
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Since its outbreak in Wuhan, China, coronavirus has become a global threat. So far, 3,065 people have died, 2,912 of them in China.
Globally, it has infected 89,700 people in 65 countries and in the US, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over coronavirus after a California man died after falling ill with the virus while on a cruise ship.
Officials are trying to locate hundreds of other Californians who disembarked from the Grand Princess ship in San Francisco last month after a trip to Mexico.
Uganda president Yoweri Museveni
Officials want to determine whether they also might have contracted the virus.
That same ship, after a subsequent trip to Hawaii, canceled its stop in Baja California and was scheduled to return early to San Francisco on Wednesday, but it was being held off the coast so public health officials could screen everyone onboard, the governor said.
China’s city of Wuhan
The victim had underlying health conditions and becomes the county’s second confirmed case of COVID-19 and officials said close contacts of the patient were being quarantined and monitored for the illness.
He tested positive Tuesday and had been placed in isolation at Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center.
Ten Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers and five emergency responders, who were exposed before the patient was put in isolation, are now in quarantine.
Corona virus
The virus has now been reported in 12 counties in the state and has sickened more than 50 people.
Newsom said he felt confident that the state could prevent the virus from being spread by passengers of the cruise who already had returned to California.
“We have the resources,” Newsom said. “We have the capacity. By this evening, we will have contacted every county health official that has someone who came off this cruise.
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“They will have their contact information and begin a process to contact those individuals.”
Newsom said his emergency declaration is intended to help California prepare for and contain the spread of the coronavirus by allowing state agencies to more easily procure equipment and services, share information on patients and alleviate restrictions on the use of state-owned properties and facilities.