Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 13 August 2021

This week, over the period 4 to 8 August 2021, based on adults in Great Britain:

• The proportion of adults reporting to wear face coverings when outside their home (90%) fell slightly this week when compared with last week (92%), as did the percentage of adults who always or often maintain social distancing (49% this week, 53% last week).

• A high proportion of adults felt that measures to slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) were either very important or important, such as wearing a face covering while shopping (88% this week, 89% last week) and socially distancing from others not in their household (86% this week, 89% last week).

• The proportion of adults that reported self-isolating in the last seven days remained stable (4% this week and last week).

• The main reasons adults self-isolated in the last seven days continued to be because of being in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 (38%) or being notified by the NHS app to self-isolate (27%).

• The proportion of adults meeting up indoors with someone not in their household in the past seven days increased slightly this week (64% this week, 62% last week) continuing an increase seen since the removal of legal restrictions as part of step 4 of the roadmap in England on 19 July (47% in the period 14 to 18 July).

• The proportion of adults meeting up outdoors with someone not in their household in the past seven days decreased this week (60% this week, 65% last week).

• Over a quarter of adults (27% this week, 28% last week) reported they felt it will take more than a year for life to return to normal, this appears to have decreased since the removal of legal restrictions as part of step 4 of the roadmap in England on 19 July (32% in the period 14 to 18 July); around 2 in 10 adults (18% this week, 17% last week) reported they felt it would take six months or less.

• Personal well-being measures remained fairly stable this week compared with last week, with similar levels for life satisfaction (7.1 this week, 7.0 last week), anxiety (3.8 this week, 3.9 last week), the feeling that the things done in life are worthwhile (7.4 this week, 7.3 last week), while happiness (7.1) was unchanged from last week.

• Positive sentiment towards a COVID-19 vaccine remained high (97% of adults this week, 96% last week).

This release 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.

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.

Positive vaccine sentiment

"Positive vaccine sentiment" refers to adults who:

• have received a vaccine

• have been offered a vaccine and are waiting to be vaccinated

• report being very or fairly likely to have a vaccine if offered

Our survey does not include adults living in care homes or some other types of communal establishments so will not capture vaccinations in these settings. Because of small sample sizes, the percentage of adults who have declined the vaccine should be treated with caution.

Estimates of attitudes towards vaccination provided since 13 to 17 January 2021 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 and weighting

From this week (4 to 8 August 2021) onwards, in order to help ensure the survey remains sustainable, the OPN will have a reduced sample size of around 5,000 households each week. This week, we sampled 4,996 households. These were randomly selected from those that had previously completed the Labour Market Survey (LMS) or Opinions and Lifestyle Survey. The responding sample contained 3,063 individuals, representing a 61% response rate.

Survey weights were applied to make estimates representative of the population (based on August 2021 population estimates). Further information on the survey design and quality can be found in the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Quality and Methodology Information.