Coronavirus lockdown: Government sends mass text message urging people to stay at home

‘New rules in force now: you must stay at home’

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 24 March 2020 09:39 GMT
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Boris Johnson announces nationwide lockdown to tackle coronavirus

The government has sent a mass text message to as many phones as possible, urging citizens to stay at home during the coronavirus lockdown.

The message sends recipient to the government’s devoted advice website about the outbreak, as well as encouraging them to stay indoors.

It comes just hours after Boris Johnson announced the UK would be largely shut down in the coming weeks, with citizens discouraged from going outside for all but essential journeys.

“GOV.UK CORONAVIRUS ALERT,” the text reads. “New rules in force now: you must stay at home.”

It goes onto restate the government’s new slogan for its coronavirus response: “Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.”

It is not clear who received the text message. It does not appear to have been sent to all UK phones, but was dispatched to users on a variety of different phone networks.

The NHS has already been sending text messages to as many of the 1.5 million people in the UK considered to be at severe risk, telling them to stay inside for 12 weeks.

But the new messages identified themselves as coming from the UK government, and were sent more broadly.

Other countries have used mass text messages to send out new guidance to citizens and provide information about their handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

The UK government does not have any similar facility in place. Instead, it asked mobile operators to send out the text, meaning that they could arrive on a staggered basis as different operators send out the messages.

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