Over 50,000 people have signed a petition asking Boris Johnson to call the nation to prayer in response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The petition, on Change.org, takes inspiration from King George VI's desperate call to the nation to join in a day of prayer on Sunday 26 May 1940, the start of the evacuation of Dunkirk, when hundreds of thousands of Allied troops risked annihilation at the hands of the Nazis.

In the end, the Nazis did not launch a full-scale assault and a heavy fog obscured the vessels transporting the troops back to safety in Britain.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill would go on to call the dramatic rescue a "miracle of deliverance". 

Susan Hawkes, who created the petition, said she hoped to see the same miraculous results in the face of the coronavirus, which has claimed over 12,000.

"Our country is in crisis due to the coronavirus; our government is doing the best it can, but surely we need to call upon God for help," she writes in the petition.

"I realise we live in a diverse society with many different religions; many however still regard Great Britain as a Christian nation and this would therefore be an appropriate response.

"It would not be compulsory for all obviously, but a call from the top for collective prayer could produce miraculous results as it did in 1940.

"Seven times throughout WWII there were calls to national days of prayer and the final result was astounding.

"So I call upon our Prime Minister, Mr Boris Johnson to call for a national day of prayer.

"May God help us and heal our land."