PM advises to follow social distancing, home quarantine: Shooter Abhishek Verma

Indian shooter Abhishek Verma, who interacted with Prime Minister Narendra Modi via video conference on Friday, said that the PM advised to follow home quarantine and social distancing to contain the spread of coronavirus.

"First of all, I would like to thank the Prime Minister for interacting with us. He asked for suggestions that how we can save our country from coronavirus. He also told us to stay at home, follow social distancing, and to keep yourself fit and healthy to fight against COVID-19," Verma told ANI after the meeting with PM.

Prime Minister asked them to include the following five points in their message to people: 'sankalp' to fight the pandemic, 'sanyam' to follow social distancing, 'sakaratmakta' to maintain positivity, 'samman' to respect the frontline soldiers in this battle including the medical fraternity, the police personnel etc and 'sahyog' at personal level as well as at national level through contribution to PM-CARES fund. He also asked them to highlight the importance of both physical and mental fitness and also popularize guidelines released by AYUSH Ministry.

Modi held a meeting via video conference with 40 elite sportspersons of the country including Indian captain Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Mary Kom on the ongoing situation in the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This is the first time that the PM has interacted with sports personalities since the 21-day lockdown was enforced on March 24 to contain the spread of the virus.

The other prominent people included PT Usha, Pullela Gopichand, Vishwanathan Anand, Hima Das, Bajrang Punia, PV Sindhu, Rohit Sharma, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, and Cheteshwar Pujara.