Amid coronavirus outbreak, OPEC officials avoid hugs, greet each other with their feet

Vienna: When OPEC ministers descend on Vienna to decide oil production policy, their meetings are usually accompanied by displays of brotherhood between the men in charge of a third of global crude supplies. This time, as the world battles a coronavirus outbreak, they have been given strict instructions: no handshakes, don’t hug and wash your hands frequently. “Avoid close contact,” reads a poster for ministers and delegates as they enter the headquarters of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in the Austrian capital. “Avoid handshakes and hugs,” it adds in its list of directives. The secretary general of the group, Mohammad Barkindo, and Russian energy minister Alexander Novak were shown in a video chuckling as they tapped each others feet, as an alternative form of greeting.

👀😀#OPEC #JMMC pic.twitter.com/74JLW2XPhl

— OPEC (@OPECSecretariat) March 4, 2020

But the video posted on Twitter by the OPEC secretariat also showed the two men in a brief handshake, while an official photo also showed Barkindo clasping hands with Nigeria’s minister. As part of its precautions, OPEC said the number of delegates attending this week’s meetings would be kept to a minimum and journalists were barred from the OPEC building. Outside the headquarters, the usual crowd of reporters clustering around ministers as they came and went from hotels was noticeably smaller. Russian energy minister Alexander Novak and several OPEC ministers and delegates had their temperature checked before entering the OPEC headquarters on Wednesday. “If someone arriving to OPEC has a temperature above 37.5 degree Celsius, an alert will be raised,” a source, who was speaking from inside the OPEC headquarters, told Reuters. OPEC member Iran, some of whose officials have gone down with the virus as the country grapples to contain one of the worst outbreaks outside of China, South Korea and Italy, sent its minister, Bijan Zanganeh, to this week’s meeting. A waitress at the Palais Kempinski where he and ministers from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Venezuela stay said she was following advice to keep her hands clean with regular washing or sanitiser. “That’s all you can do,” she said. A spokeswoman said her hotel was following the recommendations from the health authorities, adding: “We do not want to spread panic.” Austria’s airport authorities began mandatory temperature checks on Tuesday for passengers on direct flights from Iran, which has two such flights a week, and South Korea, which has three, according to a Vienna Airport spokesman. Health authorities in Lower Austria, the province where the airport is located, said temperatures of all passengers from Iran were checked on Wednesday and no cases were found. Some officials attending the OPEC gathering were not taking any risks. “I told people I won’t be shaking hands with them,” said one OPEC delegate.