TER APEL – Raffat Altekrete is battling the coronavirus one shopping cart at a time. The 34-year-old electrical engineer from Iraq is also expressing gratitude and hoping to win hearts in a village that hosts the Netherlands' biggest residential reception center for asylum-seekers.
Altekrete, armed with latex gloves, a cleaning cloth and a spray bottle of disinfectant, volunteered to wipe down customers' carts outside a supermarket in the small Dutch community of Ter Apel this week.
His enthusiastic efforts -- he also ran his cloth over an elderly woman’s walker and other shoppers’ car keys -- were not only aimed at combating the virus outbreak in the Netherlands, which had reported over 12,600 cases and more than 1,030 deaths as of