Coronavirus: Public Health

(asked on 19th March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which languages public health information and guidance on covid-19 guidance will be translated into by the Government; if he will make it his policy to carry out a public information campaign to ensure this information reaches people whose first language is not English; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 24th April 2020

As part of the Government's work to ensure the population are informed about COVID-19 and how best to respond, we have translated the ‘Stay at home guidance for households with possible coronavirus (COVID-19)’ and the ‘COVID 19: guidance on social distancing for everyone in the United Kingdom and protecting older people and vulnerable adults’ into a range of languages. These are the critical pieces of guidance that are relevant to a general public audience.

The translations include Polish, Welsh, Arabic (Modern), French, Simplified Chinese (Mandarin), Traditional Chinese (Cantonese), Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, and Portuguese. These translations can be found at the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-on-social-distancing-and-for-vulnerable-people

The Government will continue to keep this under review and assess where information needs to be translated into other languages. In the meantime, many local authorities are making arrangements to translate into languages that are widely spoken in their area.

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