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.

In May 2020, a survey carried out in the UK found that the 80 percent of British respondents overall reported that most people they knew had been obeying the lockdown rules. The respondents were more skeptical of the wider public as only 67 percent that most people in the UK were obeying the lockdown rules.

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 a survey carried out in May 2020, 13 percent of Brits expected the coronavirus lockdown measures to stay in place until the end of July. Another 13 percent of respondents were more optimistic and thought the lockdown measures would be in place until the end of June, although 14 of respondents expected the lockdown to carry on until 2021.

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.

Exploring the social impacts on behaviours during the different lockdown periods of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the UK. Data are from March 2020 to January 2021.

Provisional counts of the number of deaths and annualised age-standardised mortality rates involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) by major occupations, where the infection may have been acquired either before or during the period of lockdown. The deaths have been registered in England and Wales. Figures are provided for males and females.

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.

Due to changes in the collection and availability of data on COVID-19, this website will no longer be updated. The webpage will no longer be available as of 11 May 2023. On-going, reliable sources of data for COVID-19 are available via the COVID-19 dashboard and the UKHSA GLA Covid-19 Mobility Report Since March 2020, London has seen many different levels of restrictions - including three separate lockdowns and many other tiers/levels of restrictions, as well as easing of restrictions and even measures to actively encourage people to go to work, their high streets and local restaurants. This reports gathers data from a number of sources, including google, apple, citymapper, purple wifi and opentable to assess the extent to which these levels of restrictions have translated to a reductions in Londoners' movements. The data behind the charts below come from different sources. None of these data represent a direct measure of how well people are adhering to the lockdown rules - nor do they provide an exhaustive data set. Rather, they are measures of different aspects of mobility, which together, offer an overall impression of how people Londoners are moving around the capital. The information is broken down by use of public transport, pedestrian activity, retail and leisure, and homeworking. Public Transport For the transport measures, we have included data from google, Apple, CityMapper and Transport for London. They measure different aspects of public transport usage - depending on the data source. Each of the lines in the chart below represents a percentage of a pre-pandemic baseline. activity Source Latest Baseline Min value in Lockdown 1 Min value in Lockdown 2 Min value in Lockdown 3 Citymapper Citymapper mobility index 2021-09-05 Compares trips planned and trips taken within its app to a baseline of the four weeks from 6 Jan 2020 7.9% 28% 19% Google Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Location data shared by users of Android smartphones, compared time and duration of visits to locations to the median values on the same day of the week in the five weeks from 3 Jan 2020 20.4% 40% 27% TfL Bus Transport for London 2022-10-30 Bus journey ‘taps' on the TfL network compared to same day of the week in four weeks starting 13 Jan 2020 - 34% 24% TfL Tube Transport for London 2022-10-30 Tube journey ‘taps' on the TfL network compared to same day of the week in four weeks starting 13 Jan 2020 - 30% 21% Pedestrian activity With the data we currently have it's harder to estimate pedestrian activity and high street busyness. A few indicators can give us information on how people are making trips out of the house: activity Source Latest Baseline Min value in Lockdown 1 Min value in Lockdown 2 Min value in Lockdown 3 Walking Apple Mobility Index 2021-11-09 estimates the frequency of trips made on foot compared to baselie of 13 Jan '20 22% 47% 36% Parks Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Frequency of trips to parks. Changes in the weather mean this varies a lot. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 30% 55% 41% Retail & Rec Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Estimates frequency of trips to shops/leisure locations. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 30% 55% 41% Retail and recreation In this section, we focus on estimated footfall to shops, restaurants, cafes, shopping centres and so on. activity Source Latest Baseline Min value in Lockdown 1 Min value in Lockdown 2 Min value in Lockdown 3 Grocery/pharmacy Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Estimates frequency of trips to grovery shops and pharmacies. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 32% 55.00% 45.000% Retail/rec Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Estimates frequency of trips to shops/leisure locations. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 32% 55.00% 45.000% Restaurants OpenTable State of the Industry 2022-02-19 London restaurant bookings made through OpenTable 0% 0.17% 0.024% Home Working The Google Mobility Report estimates changes in how many people are staying at home and going to places of work compared to normal. It's difficult to translate this into exact percentages of the population, but changes back towards ‘normal' can be seen to start before any lockdown restrictions were lifted. This value gives a seven day rolling (mean) average to avoid it being distorted by weekends and bank holidays. name Source Latest Baseline Min/max value in Lockdown 1 Min/max value in Lockdown 2 Min/max value in Lockdown 3 Residential Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Estimates changes in how many people are staying at home for work. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 131% 119% 125% Workplaces Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Estimates changes in how many people are going to places of work. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 24% 54% 40% Restriction Date end_date Average Citymapper Average homeworking Work from home advised 17 Mar '20 21 Mar '20 57% 118% Schools, pubs closed 21 Mar '20 24 Mar '20 34% 119% UK enters first lockdown 24 Mar '20 10 May '20 10% 130% Some workers encouraged to return to work 10 May '20 01 Jun '20 15% 125% Schools open, small groups outside 01 Jun '20 15 Jun '20 19% 122% Non-essential businesses re-open 15 Jun '20 04 Jul '20 24% 120% Hospitality reopens 04 Jul '20 03 Aug '20 34% 115% Eat out to help out scheme begins 03 Aug '20 08 Sep '20 44% 113% Rule of 6 08 Sep '20 24 Sep '20 53% 111% 10pm Curfew 24 Sep '20 15 Oct '20 51% 112% Tier 2 (High alert) 15 Oct '20 05 Nov '20 49% 113% Second Lockdown 05 Nov '20 02 Dec '20 31% 118% Tier 2 (High alert) 02 Dec '20 19 Dec '20 45% 115% Tier 4 (Stay at home advised) 19 Dec '20 05 Jan '21 22% 124% Third Lockdown 05 Jan '21 08 Mar '21 22% 122% Roadmap 1 08 Mar '21 29 Mar '21 29% 118% Roadmap 2 29 Mar '21 12 Apr '21 36% 117% Roadmap 3 12 Apr '21 17 May '21 51% 113% Roadmap out of lockdown: Step 3 17 May '21 19 Jul '21 65% 109% Roadmap out of lockdown: Step 4 19 Jul '21 07 Nov '22 68% 107%

Objectives: This study investigated perceived loneliness, anxiety, and depression among young adults in the UK across five timepoints: pre-pandemic (December 2019), two coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdowns (March–June 2020, January–April 2021), and two post-lockdown phases (November–December 2021, May 2022). It aimed to assess mental health resilience, defined as a return to baseline levels post-lockdown, and identify critical timepoints where loneliness predicted mental health outcomes.Methods: A total of 158 participants (aged 18–82, predominantly under 25) completed online questionnaires measuring mental health (Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8); General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)) and loneliness (DeJong Gierveld Loneliness Scale) at two data collection points, under a cross-sectional design. Retrospective data were collected for pre-pandemic and lockdown periods, while prospective data were gathered post-lockdown. Linear mixed models and regression analyses were used to examine changes in mental health and loneliness over time and to identify predictive relationships.Results: Loneliness and mental health significantly deteriorated during lockdowns, with depression and anxiety scores worsening from pre-pandemic levels. Partial recovery was observed post-lockdown, but scores remained above baseline. Loneliness emerged as a key predictor of mental health outcomes, particularly during post-lockdown phases. The immediate post-lockdown period was identified as a critical window for interventions.Conclusions: COVID-19 lockdowns were associated with heightened loneliness and mental health challenges, with sustained effects post-lockdown. Timely interventions targeting loneliness, especially after periods of social restriction, are essential to mitigate long-term mental health impacts and inform future responses to global crises.

The Aston Lockdown Reading Survey Corpus arose from the Lockdown Library Project, a study of reading during the first UK COVID-19 lockdown, that was conducted by Aston University from 1st July - 31st August 2020. The survey addressed the following research questions:

RQ1: How has the pandemic affected the quantity of books people are reading? RQ2: How has the pandemic influenced the type/genre of books people are reading? RQ3: How has the pandemic influenced people to return to previously read books? RQ4: How has the pandemic made people access and talk about books in new/different ways?

We hosted the survey on and administered it through www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk, distributing it via multiple social media channels, our own institution’s website and Call for Participants (https://www.callforparticipants.com), a platform that advertises academic research to the general public.

The Aston Lockdown Reading Survey Corpus comprises all 858 (anonymised) responses to our survey, totalling c. 200,000 tokens. The corpus includes XML markup to capture the following metadata attributes:

urn: Unique response number (URN), automatically assigned by the survey software respondent_id: Unique participant ID code corresponding to the URN, used in the reporting of individual responses age_range: Participant age category occupation: Participant occupation (uncategorised free text) gender: Participant gender identity (categorised free text) q_id: Survey question number q_type: Survey question type (open or closed) q_prompt: Survey question prompt text

The corpus is made available as a freely-accessible resource, providing a unique insight into the ways in which the first UK COVID-19 lockdown affected public reading habits.

A detailed description of the corpus and its analysis within the Lockdown Library Project is provided in Boucher et al. (2024) "Reading Habits in the Covid Pandemic: An Applied Linguistic Perspective".

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.

Tables to accompany the ‘Parenting in lockdown: Coronavirus and the effects on work-life balance article

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

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

The Opinion Research team set up an online diary to capture the views, behaviours and experiences of a sample of Londoners during the coronavirus outbreak. Commencing in late May, this online diary ran for 8 weeks. Fortnightly summary reports can be found accessed below, and included: Week 1 and 2 – reflected on experiences during lockdown to date and explored views on easing lockdown. Week 3 and 4 – explored priorities for London’s recovery, both short and long-term, and views on the Test and Trace system. Week 5 and 6 – explored growing disengagement with the coronavirus outbreak and reflected on some of the positive impacts of lockdown.​ Week 7 and 8 – explored the idea of a 15-minute city and aspirations for the future of London. 

In a survey carried out in May 2020, 18 percent of Brits surveyed think that schools in the UK should re-open once new cases of coronavirus infections starts to go down, while 52 percent believe they should re-open under the same circumstances but close down if infections begin to rise again. There was very little support for any of the places to open as normal again on June 1, regardless of the situation, while 25 percent of respondents thought that pubs should not open again until a vaccine for coronavirus is found.

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.

Relative odds of respondents having a positive opinion of UK government decision-making during the COVID-19 lockdown, by demographic group.