10 lockdown lessons to learn for next time

Five years since Boris Johnson ordered the UK to stay at home to stall the virus's spread, Observer Science Editor Robin McKie reflects on the next steps

- Robin McKie

Exactly five years ago Boris Johnson announced that the United Kingdom was being placed in lockdown. "From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction - you must stay at home because the critical thing we must do is to stop the disease spreading between households," the PM told the nation.

That lockdown, Britain's first of the Covid-19 pandemic, lasted until June. People reacted in myriad ways: with manic outpourings of video calls; obsessive outbreaks of bread baking and pet dog purchases; or simple, quiet desperation as they tried to fend off the isolation imposed on them. More lockdowns were to follow, but the first defined the sudden, chilling, unwelcome seclusion that individuals were forced to experience as social contact was halted across the country.

"We've made it to the life raft," wrote the epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch. But, he added: "Dry land is far away."

It was a grim time for most people. But having experienced that lockdown, it is now pertinent to ask, five years later, what did we learn? What were we taught by an ordeal that touched every aspect of our lives? And, in particular, what have the scientists got to tell us now about the lessons of lockdown?

One: Give the NHS some slack

In 2020 we were operating the NHS without slack. Wards and intensive care units were at full capacity before the virus arrived on our shores. When it did, the NHS faced being overwhelmed as Covid-19 threatened to trigger hundreds of thousands of new cases of seriously ill individuals to add to the health service's already overstretched capacity. This was the prime reason for imposing lockdown.

As the pandemic subsided experts demanded the NHS be supported and funded so it could be better prepared to take future outbreaks in its stride. This has not happened.