LONDON Kate Middleton and Prince William on Tuesday took to Twitter to offer their good wishes to Queen Elizabeth on her birthday. “Wishing Her Majesty The Queen a very happy 94th Birthday today!” read the tweet from the couple sent out by their Kensington Palace account. The Queen turned 94 on Tuesday but the coronavirus lockdown meant there was little fanfare to mark the occasion. Elizabeth, the world’s eldest and longest-reigning monarch, typically spends her birthday privately without much public celebration but this year the event will be even more muted. Royal birthdays and anniversaries are traditionally marked by ceremonial gun salutes, in which blank rounds are fired from various locations across London, but the queen felt it would be inappropriate to allow this to go ahead given the circumstances. The latest official figures show that about 16,000 Britons infected with the new coronavirus have died in hospital, the fifth-highest number globally. The nation is in its fourth w eek of lockdown, with most businesses closed and citizens ordered to stay at home. Flags are usually flown on government buildings to mark the queen’s birthday but officials have been told that this year not everyone would be expected to arrange for that to happen. The only official acknowledgment from the royal family came via Tw itter where Buckingham Palace posted a private family film of Elizabeth as a child, playing with her late younger sister Margaret. Queen Elizabeth II will be ringing in her 94th birthday on Tuesday, cancelling her annual celebrations of a gun salute, while being in quarantine as a large chunk of the global population self-isolates, in the wake of the coronavirus. As per reports, Her Majesty, in her 68-year reign, will be scrapping off her usual birthday formalities including a parade and a formal gun salute for the first time. Instead, the monarch is all set to mark her big day in a low-key manner by having a virtual party on video conferencing platform Zoom, where she will be joined by the rest of the royal family members for the special occasion.—AP
