Prince William Refuses To Shake Hands With Staff Who Asked To Take Photo

Prince William visited a call center in Croydon last week to praise the workers for all of their efforts amid the coronavirus crisis.

While there, Garrett Emmerson, the chief executive of the London Ambulance Service, released a statement about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s visit.

“We are all learning new ways of behaving socially as a result of this, and indeed new ways of working. We were talking with the Duke about potential future visits if we are in further stages of social distancing - we may be doing remote conferencing for events like this. That's certainly a possibility in the coming weeks and months,” Emmerson said.

According to Express, Prince William and Middleton took some precautionary measures to protect themselves against the deadly coronavirus. They reportedly used hand sanitizers twice during their visit.

However, the royal couple was criticized for not following the rules set by the WHO when it comes to social distancing. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge stayed close to each other, as well as the workers at NHS 111. They also stayed in a room with over 10 people.

But when a worker asked to take a photo with Prince William, the dad of three agreed. However, when the staff tried to shake his hands, the future king stopped him from doing so.

“Don’t shake hands! We can do a photograph if we are not within a meter of each other,” Prince William said.

“I guess it’s just polite, isn’t it? In the professional environment, we are so used to being greeted and shaking hands with each other,” supervisor Courtney Campbell said.

Meanwhile, paramedic Euan Flood also spoke about the increasing strain on 111.

“We are getting calls one after the other. Currently, we have a few hundred calls waiting to be called back, anything from a day to two, three days old. We are finding that people are quite understanding when we call them back,” Flood said.