The number of confirmed cases and deaths due to coronavirus are on the rise across the world. Millions around the world are heeding the extraordinary pleas for keeping social distance to combat the coronavirus by avoiding landmarks, resorts and other large gathering places.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), the new rules of engagement call for maintaining a gap of one to two metres (or three to six feet) to prevent possible exposure when an infected individual coughs or speaks.
Social distancing practices are changes in behaviour that can help stop the spread of infections. These often include curtailing social contact, work and schooling among seemingly healthy individuals, with a view to delaying transmission and reducing the size of an outbreak.
The illness causes mild or moderate symptoms in most of those infected, but severe symptoms are more likely in the elderly or people with existing health problems. Here are some pictures from around the world on how people are maintaining social distance to combat the coronavirus.
Because of the threat of transmission of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the Pentagon is exercising social distancing by keeping reporters' chairs four feet apart from each other during briefings. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP
Catholic faithfuls sit on chairs with yellow line tapes, to separate church goers from sitting close to each other, as part of social distancing at a church in Borongan town, Eastern Samar province, central Philippines. | (Photo by Alren BERONIO / AFP)
Shoppers stand apart as social distancing measures, amid concerns of the COVID-19 coronavirus, while queueing outside a supermarket in Manila. | (Photo by Maria TAN / AFP)
he coronavirus pandemic has rapidly redefined the concept of respecting personal space - with more and more people getting used to the idea of 'social distancing'. Above, customers line up to enter a shop in Barcelona. | AP Photo
People wear masks as they wait to enter a pharmacy in Rome on March 16. Italy has over 35,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and nearly 3,000 deaths. | AP Photo
