Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 12 March 2021

This week, over the period 3 to 7 March 2021, based on adults in Great Britain:

• Compliance with most measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) remained high, with 89% of adults reporting always or often handwashing after returning home (88% last week), 96% using a face covering (95% last week), and 91% avoiding physical contact when outside their home (92% last week).
• Since mid-January (13 to 17 January), among adults who left their home in the last seven days, we have seen a gradual increase in certain reasons for this, for example: to visit local parks or green space (21% this week compared with 14% in mid-January), collect takeaways (14% this week compared with 9% in mid-January) or shop for things other than necessities (10% this week compared with 5% in mid-January).
• All four personal well-being measures continued to improve slightly compared with last week; there has been a gradual improvement in the level of happiness (6.8 this week) since a lowest level recorded on this survey at the end of January; the level of anxiety (3.9 this week) also appears to have gradually improved since a high in early January.
• Levels of life satisfaction (6.8 this week) and feeling that the things done in life are worthwhile (7.2 this week) continued the gradual increase reported from the end of February (24 to 28 February), having been at some of the lowest levels recorded on this survey at the beginning of February 2021.
• Almost half (47%) of adults with dependent children were worried (very or somewhat) about their children returning to school or college.
• Excluding those who said they were “not at all worried”, the most frequently reported worries among adults with dependent children were about: catching COVID-19, spreading COVID-19 and the impact on their children’s mental health and well-being caused by changes in schools and colleges.
• Positive sentiment towards the COVID-19 vaccines remained high; 93% of adults reported they had now either received a vaccine or would be likely to have a vaccine if offered, similar to last week (94%).

This bulletin contains data and indicators from a module being undertaken through the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS’) Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) to understand the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on British society.

The bulletin presents a summary of the results. Breakdowns by age, sex, region and country, including confidence intervals for the estimates, are contained in the Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain dataset.

Where changes in results from previous weeks are presented in this bulletin, associated confidence intervals should be used to assess the statistical significance of the differences.

The latest statistics in this release are based on a survey of 6,029 adults aged 16 years and over in Great Britain conducted between 3 and 7 March 2021 (inclusive). Results from this period are based on 4,334 responding adults (72% response rate). Throughout the bulletin:

• “this week” refers to responses collected during the period 3 to 7 March 2021
• “last week” refers to responses collected during the period 24 to 28 February 2021

Compliance with most measures to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) remained high this week (Table 1), with 89% of adults reporting always or often handwashing after returning home (88% last week), 96% using a face covering (95% last week) and 91% avoiding physical contact when outside their home (92% last week).

Table 1: Main Indicators

Great Britain, 24 February to 7 March

Notes:

1. "This week" refers to responses collected during the period 3 to 7 March 2021.
2. "Last week" refers to responses collected during the period 24 to 28 February 2021.

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Further statistics on compliance with measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, including trends over time, can be found in Tables 1a to 6 of the Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain dataset.

Reasons for leaving home

Around 9 in 10 (94%) adults in Great Britain reported leaving home this week (93% last week). This proportion appears to have been gradually increasing since mid-January (89% in the period 13 to 17 January).

Around half (48%) of adults reported not leaving home or only leaving for work, exercise, essential shopping or medical needs this week (54% last week). This proportion appears to have been gradually decreasing since mid-January (65% in the period 13 to 17 January).

Figure 1 shows some of the other reasons adults have reported for leaving home that have shown the largest increases since mid-January.

This week, of adults who reported leaving home:

• 21% did so to visit a park or local green space (14% in mid-January)
• 16% did so for any medical need, including to get a COVID-19 vaccine (11% in mid-January)
• 14% did so to collect takeaway food or drinks from a restaurant, bar or pub (9% in mid-January)
• 10% did so to shop for things other than basic necessities such as food and medicine (5% in mid-January)
• 9% did so to take children or young people to or from school, college or nursery (5% in mid-January)
• 8% did so to meet up with people in a public space (5% in mid-January)

Figure 1: Leaving home to visit a park, collect takeaway food or for medical needs (including vaccination) is gradually increasing

Great Britain, December 2020 to March 2021

Notes:

1. Question: "In the past seven days, for what reasons have you left your home?".
2. Base: all adults who reported having in the past seven days left their home for any reason.
3. For more information as to how response options for the question "In the past seven days, for what reasons have you left your home?" have changed during the course of the pandemic and comparability of the data shown in this chart over time please see the datasets associated with this bulletin.

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Leaving home to meet others

We asked respondents to think of their largest gathering in the last seven days and found that:

• at least 12% of adults have met up indoors with someone outside their household or support bubble (excluding work or education); this was slightly more than last week (10%) although this proportion appears to have remained relatively similar in recent weeks
• at least 20% of adults have met up with someone outside their household or support bubble outdoors (excluding work or education); this was slightly more than last week (18%) and continued a gradual increase since mid-February (14% in the period 10 to 14 February)

When looking at those who had met up with others outside their household or support bubble (either indoors or outdoors), 88% (86% last week) of adults reported always or often maintaining social distance when meeting up with people outside their support bubble this week.

It is worth noting that there may be valid reasons why people are unable to maintain social distancing (essential appointments, shopping, and so on) and it does not necessarily mean that adults are breaking lockdown rules.

Leaving home for work

This week, 48% of working adults reported leaving home for work in the past seven days. Looking at this in more detail:

• The proportion of working adults reporting travelling to work exclusively in the past seven days decreased slightly to 38% this week compared with 39% last week.
• The proportion of working adults reporting working from home exclusively in the past seven days increased slightly to 36% this week compared with 32% last week. This appears to be a change in the trends seen in working from home or travelling to work exclusively in recent weeks.
• 1 in 10 (10%) working adults reported both working from home and travelling to work this week; this has been similar since we started asking this question on the survey in May 2020. (Figure 2).

This week, all four personal well-being measures continued to improve slightly compared with the levels reported last week.

There has been a gradual improvement in the level of happiness (6.8 this week) since a low level recorded on this survey in January (6.4 in the periods 13 to 31 January). The level of anxiety (3.9 this week) also appears to have gradually improved since a recent high in early January (4.6 in the period 7 to 10 January).

Levels of life satisfaction (6.8 this week compared with 6.6 last week) and feeling that the things done in life are worthwhile (7.2 this week compared with 7.1 last week) continued the gradual increase reported from the end of February (24 to 28 February), having been at some of the lowest levels recorded on this survey at the beginning of 2021 (Figure 3).

The proportion of adults who were worried (very or somewhat) about the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on their life right now was similar to last week (65% this week compared with 66% last week).

Figure 3: All four measures of well-being continued to gradually improve this week

Great Britain, March 2020 to March 2021

Notes:

1. Questions: “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?”, “Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”, “Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?” and “Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?”.
2. These questions are answered on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is “not at all” and 10 is “completely”.
3. Base: all adults.

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Worry about return to school or college

As children and young people begin to return to school or college across Great Britain, this week we asked adults with dependent children if they were specifically worried about this and why.

Almost half (47%) of adults with dependent children were worried (very or somewhat) about their children returning to school or college. Around 4 in 10 (38%) were somewhat unworried or not at all worried and 15% were neither worried nor unworried.

Excluding adults who said they were “not at all worried”, Figure 4 shows the reported reasons for worry about this among adults with dependent children. The most frequently reported worries were those about: catching COVID-19, spreading COVID-19 and the impact on their mental health and well-being caused by changes in schools and colleges.

More information on the experiences of homeschooling, and the mental health of children and young people during the pandemic is available.

This week, 3 in 10 (30%) adults in Great Britain felt that life will return to normal in six months or less (32% last week).

2 in 10 adults (20%) felt that it will take more than a year for life to return to normal, the same as last week. (Figure 5).

Figure 5: 3 in 10 (30%) adults this week reported they felt it will take less than six months for life to return to normal

Great Britain, March 2020 to March 2021

Notes:

1. Question: "How long do you think it will be before your life returns to normal?".
2. Base: all adults.
3. Response categories of “7 to 12 months”, “Never”, “Not sure” and "Prefer not to say" are not shown on this chart.

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Further statistics on well-being, loneliness, perceptions of the future and worries, including trends over time, can be found in Table 1b, Table 7 and Table 8 of the Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain dataset.

This week, 93% of adults reported they had now either received at least one dose of a coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine or would be likely (very or fairly likely) to have a vaccine if offered; this is similar to that reported last week (94%) and includes adults who have accepted and are waiting to receive one.

In early December 2020, around 8 in 10 (78%) adults indicated they would be likely to accept a vaccine if offered it (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Over 9 in 10 (93%) adults have received or would be likely to accept a COVID-19 vaccine if offered

Great Britain, December 2020 to March 2021

Notes:

1. Questions: "Have you received a vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19)?", "Have you been offered the vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19)?" and "If a vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19) was offered to you, how likely or unlikely would you be to have the vaccine?".
2. Base: all adults.
3. Questions asked about attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination have changed over the survey periods shown so interpretation of this time series should be made with caution. For more information please see the datasets associated with this bulletin.
4. Category of "Adults who have received the vaccine, are awaiting, or would be likely to have the vaccine if offered" includes those who reported they have either received the COVID-19 vaccine, accepted an offer of a vaccine and are awaiting vaccination, or would be very or fairly likely to have the vaccine if offered.
5. Categories of "Adults who have been offered and declined the vaccine or would be very or fairly unlikely to have the vaccine if offered", "Neither", "Don’t know" and "Prefer not to say" are not shown on this chart.

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The 93% of adults in Great Britain this week who reported this “positive vaccine sentiment”¹ is made up of those who reported either that they:

• had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine (41%)
• had been offered a vaccine and were awaiting it (6%)
• had not yet been offered a vaccine but were likely (very or fairly) to have one when offered (46%)

Positive vaccine sentiment appeared to increase with age, with the majority (99%) of adults aged 70 years and over reporting they had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, were awaiting one, or would be likely to accept one if offered. This is compared with 89% of adults aged 16 to 29 years, 90% of adults aged 30 to 49 years, and 97% aged 50 to 69 years (Figure 7).

Figure 7: 99% of adults aged 70 years or over said they had received at least one dose of a vaccine, were awaiting one or would be likely to accept one

Great Britain, 3 to 7 March 2021

Notes:

1. Questions: "Have you received a vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19)?", "Have you been offered the vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19)?" and "If a vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19) was offered to you, how likely or unlikely would you be to have the vaccine?”.
2. Base: all adults.
3. Totals may not sum to 100% because of rounding and because proportions of less than 1% are not included in this chart.

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Of all adults who said they would be unlikely to have a COVID-19 vaccine if offered, or had decided not to have a vaccine when offered, the most commonly reported reasons why not were:

• feeling worried about the long-term effects on their health (36% this week, 45% last week)
• feeling worried about the side effects (34% this week, 25% last week)
• wanting to wait to see how well the vaccine works (28% this week, 39% last week)

The proportions of all possible reasons why not, as well as further statistics on attitudes to vaccines this week can be found in Table 12 of the Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain dataset.

For more information on attitudes to COVID-19 vaccines among different sub-groups of the population, including breakdowns by age, sex, ethnic group and disability status, see:

• Coronavirus and vaccine hesitancy by sub-group, Great Britain: 13 January to 7 February 2021
• Coronavirus and vaccine attitudes and behaviours in England: over 80s population, 15 February to 20 February 2021

Notes for: Attitudes to COVID-19 vaccination

1. Totals for the combined category of “positive vaccine sentiment” may appear to be different than if combining the individual category estimates shown in Figure 6 because of rounding.

Dependent children

A dependent child is defined as someone who is under the age of 16 years, or someone who is aged 16 to 18 years, has never been married and is in full-time education.

Analysis in this release is based on adults who have a dependent child in their household, and have also confirmed their dependent child is of school age.

Lockdown

On 5 January 2021, the UK government announced a further national lockdown for England. Similar rules applied for Scotland and Wales, particularly the message to “stay at home” meaning that adults in Great Britain were under a national lockdown at the start of the year in 2021.

On 22 February 2021, the UK government published a four-step roadmap to ease lockdown restrictions in England. On 23 February, the Scottish government published an update to the strategic framework for easing lockdown restrictions in Scotland. In Wales, from 20 February a maximum of two households are now able to meet outdoors for exercise with the next review of lockdown restrictions due by March 12.

Personal well-being

Personal well-being measures ask people to evaluate, on a scale of 0 to 10, how satisfied they are with their life overall, whether they feel the things they do in life are worthwhile, and happiness and anxiety yesterday.

For the latest estimates of personal well-being available from the Annual Population Survey (APS) and more information on the comparability of estimates of personal well-being between the APS and the estimates provided in this bulletin from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN), see Personal well-being in the UK, quarterly: April 2011 to September 2020.

Vaccination for COVID-19

Following the first coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine being given in the UK on 8 December 2020, COVID-19 vaccination is now being provided in various locations across the country. The vaccines are currently being offered in some hospitals and pharmacies, at local vaccination centres run by GPs and at larger vaccination centres.

National Health Service (NHS) guidance on the COVID-19 vaccines is available.

More information on the number of people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine to date is available.

Working adults

For this survey, a person is said to be a “working adult” if:

• they had a paid job, either as an employee or self-employed
• they did any casual work for payment
• they did any unpaid or voluntary work in the previous week

The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) is a monthly omnibus survey. In response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we have adapted the OPN to become a weekly survey used to collect data on the impact of the coronavirus on day-to-day life in Great Britain. In the latest wave, 6,029 individuals were sampled, with a response rate of 72% (or 4,334 individuals) for the survey conducted from 3 to 7 March 2021.

The survey results are weighted to be a nationally representative sample for Great Britain, and data are collected using an online self-completion questionnaire. Individuals who did not want to or were unable to complete the survey online had the opportunity to take part over the phone. Survey estimates may be subject to non-response bias, which could result in some groups of the population being less likely to take part. Steps have been taken to minimise the impact of non-response bias, which can be found in published information about the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey QMI.

Where changes in results from previous weeks or differences between groups are presented in this bulletin, associated confidence intervals, which are included in the associated datasets, indicate their significance.

Estimates in this bulletin are rounded to the nearest whole number. Where individual answer categories for a question have been combined to provide an estimate, this total may not appear to sum to the total of individual categories because of this rounding.

Estimates of attitudes towards vaccination provided since 13 to 17 January should be used with caution when compared with any weeks prior to this. In the weeks prior to this, adults were asked their likelihood of having a vaccine if offered, but were not specifically asked if they had already been offered or received a vaccine.

Sampling

A sample of 6,029 households was randomly selected from those that had previously completed the Labour Market Survey (LMS). From each household, one adult was selected at random but with unequal probability. Younger people were given higher selection probability than other people because of under-representation in the sample available for the survey. The survey also includes a boosted sample for England, to allow more detailed analysis at a regional level, which are available in the datasets.

Weighting

The responding sample in the week 3 to 7 March 2021 contained 4,334 individuals (72% response rate). Survey weights were applied to make estimates representative of the population.

Weights were first adjusted for non-response and attrition. Subsequently, the weights were calibrated to satisfy population distributions considering the following factors: sex by age, region, tenure, highest qualification and employment status. For age, sex and region, population totals based on projections of mid-year population estimates for March 2021 were used. The resulting weighted sample is therefore representative of the Great Britain adult population by a number of socio-demographic factors and geography.

For more information, see the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey QMI.

The main strengths of the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) include:

• it allows for timely production of data and statistics that can respond quickly to changing needs
• it meets data needs: the questionnaire is developed with customer consultation, and design expertise is applied in the development stages
• robust methods are adopted for the survey's sampling and weighting strategies to limit the impact of bias
• quality assurance procedures are undertaken throughout the analysis stages to minimise the risk of error

The main limitations of the OPN include:

• analysis of estimates in Wales and Scotland are based on low sample sizes, and therefore caution should be used with these estimates
• comparisons between periods and groups must be done with caution as estimates are provided from a sample survey; as such, confidence intervals are included in the datasets to present the sampling variability, which should be taken into account when assessing differences between periods, as true differences may not exist