In order to manage the bandwidth load that internet servers are facing across Europe amid the home quarantine situation over the coronavirus pandemic, Netflix and YouTube have announced that they will be reducing the quality of their streams by a quarter for about 30 days or so.

"We are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default," YouTube reportedly mentioned in a statement. As people across the world have been following the social-distancing guidelines to step outside their houses only for the bare minimum, internet traffic has been increasing. Over the next 30 days, Netflix has promised to reduce its footprint by around 25 percent by reducing bit rates across all their streams in Europe. This comes after EU commissioner for the digital economy Thierry Breton urged internet giants to switch from high definition to the former standard definition to reduce file sizes.

"While we have seen only a few usage peaks, we have measures in place to automatically adjust our system to use less network capacity. Following the discussion between Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki and Commissioner Thierry Breton we are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to Standard Definition by default," a Google spokesperson reportedly stated.

Across the world, COVID-19, has claimed the lives of more than 10400 people and infected over 254000 people. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. As the death toll and overall cases began rising rapidly across the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency and the outbreak has now been labelled a pandemic.