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In mid-May, shortly after the de-escalation of a two-month confinement began to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus in Romania, the Romanian shoemaker Grigore Lup , from the Transylvanian city of Cluj, noted that people did not respect the rules of social distancing.

So Lup came up with the idea of leather shoes with a long toe to help keep people apart: "If two people with these shoes were in front, there would be almost a meter and a half between them," says Lup. Its size is equivalent to a European size 75 .

"You can see it on the street, people don't respect the rules of social distance," says Lup, who has been making leather shoes for 39 years. "I went to the market to buy seeds for my garden. There weren't many people there, but they kept getting closer and closer."

Lup's store, opened in 2001, sells shoes to the general public, but relies heavily on custom orders from theaters and operas across the country , as well as traditional folk dance ensembles. His business came to a standstill when the live events were canceled or postponed due to the pandemic, although he was cautiously optimistic that sales would recover over time.

Lup explains that to make the shoe he was inspired by a model he had made for actors and ensures that so far he has received five orders for these 'social distancing shoes'.

Grigore Lup works on a pair of his 'social distancing shoes'. REUTERS

Each pair requires two days of work , uses almost one square meter of leather , and costs 500 lei (104 euros).

Lup, 55, started making shoes at 16, learning from a shoemaker who at 93 still makes traditional Hungarian footwear.

Romania, which has reported 18,791 coronavirus cases and 1,240 deaths , began a gradual uprising of its confinement on May 15.

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