Due to the Coronavirus pandemic in the United Kingdom and subsequent lockdown, retail and recreation locations such as restaurants and cafes saw an 85 percent decline in their footfall in March 2020 compared with their usual activity. By contrast, residential locations saw a 15 percent increase, implying that people in the UK are complying with the social distancing encouraged by the government.

Experimental results of the pilot Office for National Statistics (ONS) online time-use study (collected 28 March to 26 April 2020 across Great Britain) compared with the 2014 to 2015 UK time-use study.

The coronavirus lockdown has resulted in a significant increase in residential location footfall in the United Kingdom, compared with a huge decline in workplace locations. London saw the highest increase in residential location tracking at 19 percent, as well as the largest decline in workplace activity at -62 percent. In all the major UK cities provided here, there has been a decline in workplace activity and an increase in residential activity, implying that the British public are adhering to the government's social distancing pleas.

In May 2020, a survey carried out in the United Kingdom found that around two-thirds of the British missed seeing family and friends the most during the lockdown period as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. 38 percent of respondents said they miss going to restaurants and pubs, while 35 percent reported that they missed going on holidays. The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

The coronavirus outbreak has had a huge impact on retail locations in the United Kingdom (UK). Since mid-March, footfall in UK retail locations (including high streets, shopping centers and retail parks) fell the sharpest on April 12, coinciding with Easter, with a decline of 89.9 percent.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Fact and Figures page.

In May 2020, a survey carried out in Great Britain found that, since the lockdown restrictions were imposed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, nearly 78 percent of the respondents said staying in touch with family and friends remotely had helped them cope during this period, while a further 68 percent said watching films or using streaming services had helped them.

The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

In June 2020, 31 percent of 16 to 39 year olds reported experiencing moderate to severe symptoms of depression, prior to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown around 11 percent of those aged between 16 and 39 years reported depression symptoms. Across all adults, signs of depression has more than doubled when compared with before the pandemic. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

In May 2020, a survey carried out in the United Kingdom found that five percent of Brits had been frequently visiting friends they don't live with during the coronavirus lockdown period, while five percent also say they have been regularly visiting family during this period. The government recommends that during the lockdown period people should only go outside for one form of exercise a day, but eight percent of survey respondents said they periodically go out for more than once for exercise. The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

In recent years behavioural science has quickly become embedded in national level governance. As the contributions of behavioural science to the UK's COVID-19 response policies in early 2020 became apparent, a debate emerged in the British media about its involvement. This served as a unique opportunity to capture public discourse and representation of behavioural science in a fast-track, high-stake context. We aimed at identifying elements which foster and detract from trust and credibility in emergent scientific contributions to policy making. With this in mind, in Study 1 we use corpus linguistics and network analysis to map the narrative around the key behavioural science actors and concepts which were discussed in the 647 news articles extracted from the 15 most read British newspapers over the 12-week period surrounding the first hard UK lockdown of 2020. We report and discuss (1) the salience of key concepts and actors as the debate unfolded, (2) quantified changes in the polarity of the sentiment expressed toward them and their policy application contexts, and (3) patterns of co-occurrence via network analyses. To establish public discourse surrounding identified themes, in Study 2 we investigate how salience and sentiment of key themes and relations to policy were discussed in original Twitter chatter (N = 2,187). In Study 3, we complement these findings with a qualitative analysis of the subset of news articles which contained the most extreme sentiments (N = 111), providing an in-depth perspective of sentiments and discourse developed around keywords, as either promoting or undermining their credibility in, and trust toward behaviourally informed policy. We discuss our findings in light of the integration of behavioural science in national policy making under emergency constraints.

Correlation coefficients between POTJs, age, measures of affect, load, compliance and change to life.

As of November 1, 2020, 53 percent of surveyed adults in Great Britain reported that their well-being was being affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The share of adults who reported their well-being was being adversely affected also amounted to 53 percent in March as the country was entering its first lockdown, before gradually decreasing to a low of 39 percent in August as the UK began to open up. However, the effects of the crisis have been felt more in recent weeks as the number of cases rose again in the 'second wave' and the country entered a second lockdown for November.

The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

In recent years behavioural science has quickly become embedded in national level governance. As the contributions of behavioural science to the UK's COVID-19 response policies in early 2020 became apparent, a debate emerged in the British media about its involvement. This served as a unique opportunity to capture public discourse and representation of behavioural science in a fast-track, high-stake context. We aimed at identifying elements which foster and detract from trust and credibility in emergent scientific contributions to policy making. With this in mind, in Study 1 we use corpus linguistics and network analysis to map the narrative around the key behavioural science actors and concepts which were discussed in the 647 news articles extracted from the 15 most read British newspapers over the 12-week period surrounding the first hard UK lockdown of 2020. We report and discuss (1) the salience of key concepts and actors as the debate unfolded, (2) quantified changes in the polarity of the sentiment expressed toward them and their policy application contexts, and (3) patterns of co-occurrence via network analyses. To establish public discourse surrounding identified themes, in Study 2 we investigate how salience and sentiment of key themes and relations to policy were discussed in original Twitter chatter (N = 2,187). In Study 3, we complement these findings with a qualitative analysis of the subset of news articles which contained the most extreme sentiments (N = 111), providing an in-depth perspective of sentiments and discourse developed around keywords, as either promoting or undermining their credibility in, and trust toward behaviourally informed policy. We discuss our findings in light of the integration of behavioural science in national policy making under emergency constraints.

Reference data to accompany an article on the impact of caring responsibilities during the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown

Background: COVID-19 lockdowns have reduced opportunities for physical activity (PA) and encouraged more sedentary lifestyles. A concomitant of sedentariness is compromised mental health. We investigated the effects of COVID-19 lockdown on PA, sedentary behavior, and mental health across four Western nations (USA, UK, France, and Australia).Methods: An online survey was administered in the second quarter of 2020 (N = 2,541). We measured planned and unplanned dimensions of PA using the Brunel Lifestyle Physical Activity Questionnaire and mental health using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire. Steps per day were recorded only from participants who used an electronic device for this purpose, and sedentary behavior was reported in hours per day (sitting and screen time). Results: In the USA and Australia samples, there was a significant decline in planned PA from pre- to during lockdown. Among young adults, Australians exhibited the lowest planned PA scores, while in middle-aged groups, the UK recorded the highest. Young adults exhibited the largest reduction in unplanned PA. Across nations, there was a reduction of ~2000 steps per day. Large increases in sedentary behavior emerged during lockdown, which were most acute in young adults. Lockdown was associated with a decline in mental health that was more pronounced in women.Conclusions: The findings illustrate the deleterious effects of lockdown on PA, sedentary behavior, and mental health across four Western nations. Australian young and lower middle-aged adults appeared to fare particularly badly in terms of planned PA. The reduction in steps per day is equivalent to the non-expenditure of ~100 kcal. Declines in mental health show how harmful lockdowns can be for women in particular.

Given the outbreak of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), pandemic during March 2020, lockdown measures taken by governments have forced many families, especially those who have children, to re-arrange domestic and market work division. In this study, I investigate the factors associated with partnered and employed individuals’ involvement with housework during the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom. Drawing evidence from the first wave of the Covid-19 Survey from the Five National Longitudinal Studies dataset with using OLS regressions, this study found that daily working hours, socioeconomic status, and partner’s key worker status are important indicators of daily time spent on housework. Furthermore, interaction analysis showed that women living with a key worker partner not only did more housework than women whose partner was working in a regular job, but they also did more housework than men living with a key worker partner during the lockdown. Policy implications of regulating maximum daily working hours and key worker status are discussed in the context of re-arranging paid and unpaid work between couples during the first lockdown in the United Kingdom.

Citation: Sönmez, I ̇brahim. 2021. A Missed Opportunity for Men? Partnered and Employed Individuals’ Involvement with Housework during the COVID-19 Lockdown in the UK. SocialSciences10: 135. https:// doi.org/10.3390/socsci10040135

Wald, odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals from the ordinal regressions for POTJ-day, POTJ-week and POTJ-8 months.

Infectious diseases generate spatial dependence or contagion not only between individuals but also between geographical units. New infections in one local district do not just depend on properties of the district, but also on the strength of social ties of its population with populations in other districts and their own degree of infectiousness. We show that SARS-CoV-2 infections during the first wave of the pandemic spread across district borders in England as a function of pre-crisis commute to work streams between districts. Crucially, the strength of this spatial contagion depends on the phase of the epidemic. In the first pre-lockdown phase, the spread of the virus across district borders is high. During the lockdown period, the cross-border spread of new infections slows down significantly. Spatial contagion increases again after the lockdown is eased but not statistically significantly so.

There is an urgent need to understand the factors that mediate and mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on behaviour and wellbeing. However, the onset of the outbreak was unexpected and the rate of acceleration so rapid as to preclude the planning of studies that can address these critical issues. Coincidentally, in January 2020, just prior to the outbreak in the UK, my team launched a study that collected detailed (~50 minute) cognitive and questionnaire assessments from >200,000 members of the UK public as part of a collaboration with the BBC. This placed us in a unique position to examine how aspects of mental health subsequently changed as the pandemic arrived in the UK. Therefore, we collected data from a further ~120,000 people in May, including additional detailed measures of self-perceived pandemic impact and free text descriptions of the main positives, negatives and pragmatic measures that people found helped them maintain their wellbeing. In this data archive, we include the survey data from January and May 2020 examining impact of Covid-19 on mood, wellbeing and behaviour in the UK population. This data is reported in a preprint article, where we apply a novel fusion of psychometric, multivariate and machine learning analyses to this unique dataset, in order to address some of the most pressing questions regarding wellbeing during the pandemic in a data-driven manner. The preprint is available on this URL. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.18.20134635v1 Recruitment Starting from December 26th 2019, participants were recruited to the study website, where they completed cognitive tests and a detailed questionnaire. Articles describing the study were placed on the BBC2 Horizon, BBC Home page, BBC News Home page and circulated on mobile news meta-apps from January 1st 2020. To maximise representativeness of the sample there were no inclusion/exclusion criteria. Analyses here exclude data from participants under 16 years old, as they completed a briefer questionnaire, and those who responded to the questionnaire unfeasibly fast (<4 minutes). Cognitive test data will be reported separately. The study was approved by the Imperial College Research Ethics Committee (17IC4009). Data collection Data were collected via our custom server system, which produces study-specific websites (https://gbws.cognitron.co.uk) on the Amazon EC2. Questionnaires and tests were programmed in Javascript and HTML5. They were deliverable via personal computers, tablets and smartphones. The questionnaire included scales quantifying sociodemographic, lifestyle, online technology use, personality, and mental health (Supplement 1). Participants could enrol for longitudinal follow up, scheduled for 3, 6 and 12 months. People returning to the site outside of these timepoints were navigated to a different URL. On May 2nd 2020, the questionnaire was augmented - in light of the Covid-19 pandemic - with an extended mood scale, and an instrument comprising 47 items quantifying self-perceived effects on mood, behaviour and outlook (Pandemic General Impact Scale PD-GIS-11). Questions regarding pre-existing psychiatric and neurological conditions, lockdown context, having the virus, and free text fields were added. This coincided with further promotion via BBC2 Horizon and BBC Homepage.

BackgroundPeoples' sexual behaviors have changed during the period of enforced COVID-19 social distancing, in some cases, to cope with negative feelings during lockdown. Research on coping using sex is relatively restricted to samples of men with a history of sexual offending, and it is unknown whether coping using sex is associated with health-related behaviors and mental health in the general population.AimWe examined if coping using sex before and during lockdown was associated with adverse outcomes (i.e., self-perceived reduction in health-related behaviors and mental health) in a community sample.HypothesesWe hypothesized that participants who reported greater use of sex to cope in the weeks preceding lockdown would show a greater decline in health-related behaviors and mental health during lockdown. Furthermore, that changes in coping using sex resulting from lockdown would account for further variance in the worsening of health-related behaviors and mental health.MethodsParticipants were UK residents, aged 18–60 years, and fluent in English. 789 participants completed an online survey, providing demographic information, self-reported social distancing, loneliness, and coping using sex over a 14-day period during lockdown, and retrospectively preceding lockdown.OutcomesParticipants reported perceived changes in health-related behaviors and mental health symptomatology during lockdown compared to before the pandemic. They also self-reported levels of stress, anxiety and depression during lockdown.ResultsGreater coping using sex prior to lockdown predicted positive change in health-related behaviors, for example, higher scores were associated with participants reporting having exercised and slept more. It was also associated with higher trait levels of anxiety, stress and depression during lockdown. Changes in coping using sex from before to during lockdown did not predict perceived changes in health related behaviors or mental health symptomatology.ConclusionsOverall, greater coping using sex prior to lockdown was associated with worse mental health symptomatology during lockdown (anxiety, depression and stress), however, it was also associated with perceived positive change in health-related behaviors compared with before lockdown. This suggests that coping using sex may be associated with negative emotional reactions during lockdown, but may also be linked with positive change in health-promoting behaviors.