Italians may be stuck at home — the country is now locked down, in the face of what is so far Europe’s most severe coronavirus outbreak — but they are still getting their voices heard.

At precisely noon on Saturday, millions of Italians, from Piedmont to Sicily, leaned out of windows or stood on their balconies to applaud the health care workers in hospitals and other frontline medical staff who have been working round the clock to care for coronavirus patients.

As church bells normally drowned out by traffic pealed in the surreal silence that defines Italy since Wednesday’s lockdown, applause filled streets, piazzas and even country roads, after messages went viral on social media calling Italians to put their hands together.

There was a similar response to another online appeal on Friday evening, asking Italians to sing the national anthem — or play it on a musical instrument — at exactly 6pm.

The socially distant flash mob swept social media.

Naturally, not everyone is blessed with a voice like Pavarotti. Some Italians preferred banging on pots and calling out, “We will make it.”

It’s unclear who began the musical interlude, but in the land that gave the world opera, it’s clearly not meant to be a cacophonous mess, and a programme for more songs is spreading online. At 6pm on Saturday, Italians will sing Azzurro, a 1968 hit by the singer Adriano Celentano, and on Sunday, Ma il cielo è sempre più blu, by Nino Gaetano.