Yahoo News Coronavirus: Nearly 90% of Brits say they're coping well during the COVID-19 outbreak
A new poll has shown nearly 90% of Brits are coping well with the coronavirus lockdown as social distancing measures continue.
The UK is in its fifth week of social distancing restrictions, with the government announcing on April 17 that measures will be kept in place for “at least” another three weeks.
A new YouGov poll, conducted and published on Friday, asked 2944 British residents: “How well would you say you are coping with the circumstances caused by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis?”
A quarter (25%) of those polled said they were coping “very well” under the UK government’s lockdown measures, while a further 64% percent said they were “pretty well” under the circumstances.
The results show the majority of the public are adapting well to social distancing measures.
However, 7% of respondents said they were not coping “not very well” while 2% answered “not well at all”. A further 2% said they didn’t know.
The figures come as MPs were warned about the potential health impact on the UK population if there is an increase in deprivation, as a result of a prolonged economic downturn caused by the lockdown.
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Professor Chris Whitty told Westminster’s Science and Technology Committee about several possible negative impacts on health that Covid-19 could have, one of which included the economic fallout of the pandemic.
The chief medical officer for England said: “One of the things that I’ve tried to say several times in public and I will say again here is that in terms of looking at just the public health, there are four forms of major negative impact on health, just narrowly health that this epidemic is going to have.
“There’s direct deaths from people dying of COVID with the NHS working well, there are indirect deaths because the NHS got overwhelmed which it has not due to the fantastic work of the whole of the UK public, as well as the absolutely remarkable work of the NHS, it has not.
“But that was the second risk of overwhelming the emergency services”
“The final one though, and this is absolutely within the scope of Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), and we’ve looked at this, is we all know that there is a gradient between health and deprivation and if as a result of economic downturns for prolonged periods, deprivation increases, that will have a health effect.”
The UK is in its fifth week of social distancing restrictions, with the government announcing on April 17 that measures will be kept in place for “at least” another three weeks.
On Friday, Matt Hancock warned it was too soon for UK lockdown measures to be relaxed, with the next review of the rules expected on May 7.
The Scottish government published a paper discussing how the country could remove the current lockdown restrictions on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Police forces across the UK are urging Brits to maintain coronavirus social distancing after images showed people sunbathing in parks and packing out seafronts.
On Friday, it was announced there was 768 new hospital deaths in the UK related to COVID-19, bringing the total to 19,506.
The Department of Health has also said there are now 143,464 confirmed cases, up 5,386.
