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TOURISTS and art lovers cannot visit the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday (1/3), because workers went on strike after attending a meeting about the corona virus outbreak.
A long queue of tourists complaining snaking outside the most visited museum in the world, Sunday morning, when management held a staff meeting on the plague to convince workers that the risk could be overcome.
But the house of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci remained closed afterwards. Workers refused to return to work because the results of the meeting did not convince them, BFM TV said as reported by Reuters.
“Despite talks with management and staff doctors, the Louvre Museum cannot open due to lack of adequate personnel,” a museum spokesman said after the meeting.
He added there would be another meeting on Monday, but it was not yet clear when the Louvre would reopen. The museum is not included in the ban on public meetings announced by the government on Saturday to try to curb the spread of the corona virus in France.
Authorities said until further notice, a public meeting in a closed space of more than 5,000 people had to be canceled. As of Saturday night, France has confirmed 100 cases.
As a result of the ban, Paris’s annual agricultural event was closed one day earlier on Saturday. The marathon event which was to be attended by more than 40,000 runners on Sunday in Paris was also canceled despite several hundred athletes still running. [antaranews]
