Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 18 June 2021

This week, over the period 9 to 13 June 2021, based on adults in Great Britain:

• The proportion of adults who said they always or often maintained social distancing with people outside their household (66% this week, 68% last week) or avoided physical contact when outside their home (71% this week, 72% last week) continued to gradually fall; before the easing of lockdown restrictions around social contact in England from 29 March 2021 these proportions were 86% and 87% respectively (24 to 28 March 2021).

• Compliance with other measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) remained high, for example, reporting using a face covering when outside the home (96% this week and last week, 97% in the period 24 to 28 March 2021), or handwashing when returning home from a public place (85% this week, 86% last week, 89% in the period 24 to 28 March 2021).

• The proportion of adults reporting meeting up indoors (46% this week, 50% last week) or outdoors (63% this week, 65% last week) with someone not in their household, childcare or support bubble in the last seven days decreased slightly this week, possibly as a result of people returning to work following half-term school holidays in parts of England and Wales.

• Personal well-being measures of life satisfaction (7.1 this week, 7.0 last week) and feeling that things done in life are worthwhile (7.4 this week, 7.3 last week) remained relatively stable through May to early June 2021 and are still below February 2020 pre-pandemic levels (7.3 and 7.6 respectively); having both appeared to gradually improve in recent weeks, happiness level (7.2 this week, 7.3 last week) was similar to its pre-pandemic level (7.2) and anxiety level (3.7 this week, 3.6 last week) remained worse than pre-pandemic (3.5).

• Around 1 in 4 (23% this week, 24% last week) adults reported feeling lonely always, often or some of the time. This proportion was around 1 in 3 (35% this week, 34% last week) among people aged 16 to 29 years old.

• Positive sentiment towards the COVID-19 vaccine remained high, as 95% of adults reported they had now either received a vaccine or would be likely to have a vaccine if offered (96% last week); positive vaccine sentiment among people aged 16 to 29 years old was 89% (90% last week).

• Over 8 in 10 (83%) adults reported to have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine (80% last week), which includes 6 in 10 (60%) adults reporting to have received their second dose (55% 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 other establishments so will not capture vaccinations in these settings. Because of small sample sizes, the percentage of adults who have declined a 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 they were not specifically asked if they had already been offered or received a vaccine.

Sampling and weighting

In the week 9 to 13 June 2021 a sample of 6,018 households was randomly selected from those that had previously completed the Labour Market Survey.

The responding sample contained 3,751 individuals, representing a 63% response rate.

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