7. Actions undertaken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus

This wave of the survey is the first to be collected after the government’s Stay At Home measures were introduced. This advises everyone to stay in their homes apart from a limited number of reasons such as essential shopping, medical reasons, one form of daily exercise and key workers travelling to work. Estimates of the proportion of people following this guidance will be published in the third wave of the survey on 23 April.

Personal hygiene

Similar to last week, nearly all adults (99.7%) said they had washed their hands with soap and water in the past seven days to avoid infection, with 88.9% saying they washed their hands with soap and water or sanitiser when they arrived home.

Social distancing

Official advice is to practise social distancing – staying at least two metres away from other people outside your home and to shield vulnerable people, such as those in older age groups or with certain underlying health conditions.

Nearly all adults (96.8%) said they had avoided physical contact (such as shaking hands) with other people from outside their household. There was no statistically significant change from last week (94.3%).

Similarly high proportions of people (92.2%) had said they had avoided contact with older or vulnerable people. Of these, 13.4% said they had avoided someone they were caring for.

Working from home

An increased proportion of adults in employment said they were working from home this week (45.8%) compared with last week (42.9%). Of those who were in employment and have an underlying health condition, 49.4% said they were working from home.

It is not known whether those who said they were not working from home were still working in their usual place of work or if they had stopped working. More detailed information on changes to labour market participation can be found in the Faster indicators.

Self-isolation

Alongside the Stay At Home guidance, official advice is that people should self-isolate if they or someone in their household experiences symptoms related to the coronavirus (COVID-19). These results should not be interpreted as an estimate of those with COVID-19 symptoms or those diagnosed with COVID-19.

Over 2 in 5 adults (41.2%) said they had self-isolated (stayed at home) in the past seven days. For those aged 70 years and over, this rose to 62.3%, while for those with an underlying health condition (of all ages) it was 57.5% (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Over 70s are most likely to have self-isolated in the past seven days, though there has been a small increase in those aged 16 to 69 years who are self-isolating

Great Britain, 27 March 2020 to 6 April 2020

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Over 3 in 10 (31.6%) adults said someone in their household had self-isolated in the past seven days. For those aged 70 years and over this rose to 42.3% while for those with an underlying health condition it was 41.3%.

Additionally, 7 in 10 adults (71.4%) knew someone living outside their household that had self-isolated.