Queen to make rare address to nation amid coronavirus crisis
The Queen is to address the nation on Sunday delivering a message about the coronavirus crisis, Buckingham Palace has announced.
Expectation has been growing about when the head of state would make a public statement about the unprecedented events that have seen the country go into lockdown to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
The monarch has already recorded a special broadcast on the outbreak from Windsor Castle.
“Her Majesty The Queen has recorded a special broadcast to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth in relation to the coronavirus outbreak,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement.
“The televised address will be broadcast at 8pm on Sunday 5th April, 2020. The address was recorded at Windsor Castle.”
The Queen’s televised address to the nation will be only the fourth of her 68-year-reign during times of national crisis and grief.
While she broadcasts a recorded message each year on Christmas Day, special addresses from the monarch in troubled periods are rare.
There have been three previous speeches broadcast – after the Queen Mother’s death in 2002, ahead of Diana, Princess of Wales’s funeral in 1997 and about the First Gulf War in 1991.
Amid celebratory times, the Queen made a televised address to mark her Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
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