Vice President Mike Pence said on Thursday that he is "still shaking hands" amid growing concerns about the spread of coronavirus, while President Donald Trump hours later noted that he had declined to shake hands with Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, opting for an Eastern style bow instead.
Health experts have advised people to avoid shaking hands and to wash their hands regularly as coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread around the world. But Pence, who is spearheading the Trump administration's response to the outbreak, said in an interview with CNN that he has not followed this advice.
"I'm still shaking hands. I'm also washing my hands very regularly throughout the day," Pence said in an interview. "It's one of the common sense practices that Americans can engage in, is wash your hands regularly. Clean those often used surfaces," he advised.
But Trump, a few hours later during a press conference with Ireland's Varadkar, noted that he was avoiding shaking hands.
"Well, we didn't shake hands today," the president told reporters. "We looked at each other and we said, 'what are we gonna do?' Kind of a weird feeling."
President Donald Trump and Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar show how they greeted each other while talking to journalists before their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on March 12 in Washington, D.C.President Donald Trump and Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar show how they greeted each other while talking to journalists before their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on March 12 in Washington, D.C.Chip Somodevilla/Getty
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Trump and Varadkar then demonstrated how they held their respective hands together and bowed slightly, instead of shaking hands. "Yeah, we did this," the president noted. He went on to say that during his recent trip in India, bowing with hands together was the norm in the South Asian nation. Trump also pointed to the traditional bow that Japanese do when they greet one another.
"They were ahead of the curve," the president quipped.
Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was in agreement with Trump. She also advocated bowing politely instead of shaking hands or bumping elbows, as some others had previously suggested.
"Bow, in the Eastern tradition," Pelosi told reporters earlier on Thursday.
According to a tracker created by Johns Hopkins University, 127,638 people have been infected with coronavirus around the world, leading to more than 4,700 deaths as of the time of writing. More than 68,000 people have already recovered from the virus, while nearly 55,000 remain infected.
In the U.S. 1,323 cases have been confirmed, but health experts believe there are likely many more. The country has been slow to roll out testing, meaning many people who may be infected have been unable to confirm whether or not they have the virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which declared the virus a pandemic on Wednesday, has said the death toll from confirmed cases is about 3.4 percent. But health experts have assessed that the overall death rate may actually be 2 percent or less, as many cases are believed to have gone unreported.
