While social distancing will not cure the coronavirus, it will help to flatten the curve in the number of infections and help ease the burden on healthcare workers, who seem to be dealing with more patients on a daily basis. To help remind people to stay home, it appears that various carriers around the world are starting to display messages in the status bar of phones to let customers know that they should be staying home.
This varies from carrier to carrier and country to country, but according to a thread on Twitter, it seems to be coming from countries like Germany, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Peru, Turkey, India, Luxembourg, Romania, Indonesia, and Nigeria, just to name a few. We expect that eventually, more countries will be hopping on board with that idea.
Carriers have also been doing their part in trying to ensure that people stay home as much as possible. Take for example Verizon, who recently announced that they will be giving customers an extra 15GB of data that they can use as either regular data or data that can be used for hotspots.
US carriers have also announced a joint effort in which they will be temporarily waiving account cancellations and late fees for customers who might not be able to pay their bills in the coming months, due to many being forced out of a job or put on unpaid leave as companies are shutting down operations.