Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 20 August 2021

This week, over the period 11 to 15 August 2021, based on adults in Great Britain:

• The proportion of adults reporting to wear face coverings when outside their home (89%) was similar to last week (90%), while the percentage of adults who always or often maintain social distancing (46%) fell slightly this week (49% last week), as did the proportion of adults avoiding physical contact when outside their home (59%) when compared with last week (64%).

• A high proportion of adults still felt that measures to slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) were either very important or important; such as wearing a face covering (86% this week, 88% last week) and socially distancing from others not in their household (84% this week, 86% last week).

• The proportion of adults that reported self-isolating in the last seven days remained relatively stable (3% this week, 4% last week).

• The main reasons adults self-isolated in the last seven days were because of being in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 (37%), being notified by the NHS app to self-isolate (26%) and testing positive for COVID-19 (25%).

• The proportion of adults meeting up indoors with others outside their household (69%) increased compared with last week (64%), as did the proportion of adults meeting up outdoors (67% this week, 60% last week).

• Over a quarter of adults (28% this week, 27% last week) reported they felt it will take more than a year for life to return to normal, this is broadly similar to the proportions since the implementation of step 1 of the roadmap in England; 16% of adults (18% last week) reported they felt it would take six months or less.

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

• The proportion of adults that feel very or somewhat worried about the effect of COVID-19 on their life right now fell slightly (46% this week, 49% last week).

• Almost 9 in 10 (87%) people would be likely or very likely to have a booster COVID-19 vaccine if offered. Younger groups are less likely to accept a booster COVID-19 vaccine (78% for those aged 16 to 29 years) compared with older groups (96% for those aged 70 years and over).

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.

Sampling and weighting

From the week of 4 to 8 August 2021 onwards, the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) sample size was reduced to around 5,000 households each week to help ensure the survey remains sustainable. This week, we sampled 4,989 households. These were randomly selected from those that had previously completed the Labour Market Survey (LMS) or OPN. The responding sample contained 3,130 individuals, representing a 63% 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.