YOUR VIEW ON THE PANDEMIC
Our Big Conservation survey results on life during Covid-19
Our online survey looked at a range of issues surrounding the pandemic, including changes to personal lives
IT HAS been well over six months since a national lockdown was imposed on March 23 – and life in Sunderland has changed beyond recognition since then.
Across Wearside, people have moved to working from home en masse, and tougher new measures introduced in our region mean meeting up with over six people is now a crime enshrined in law, while face mask wearing is mandatory in much of the public sphere.
These changes have altered people’s attitudes, priorities and lives, which is why we asked readers to tell us about what’s changed for you in our Big Conversation survey.
Our online survey looked at a range of issues surrounding the pandemic, including changes to personal lives, travel habits, health, employment, local life and fears and hopes for the post-pandemic world.
We will be exploring all of the results in detail in the coming weeks but here we look at some of the key things you said.
HEALTH AND WELLBEING We asked readers if they felt their own mental health has been affected by the pandemic and the results were revealing.
More than one in four of respondents (26.9%) said it had been ‘strongly affected’ while almost half (43.9%) said it had been ‘slightly affected’. By contrast, 15% said it had been ‘not much affected’ and 14% said ‘not at all affected’.
FAMILY/PERSONAL LIFE
When asked to rank as priorities the activities that are important to their own personal quality of life, either now or before the pandemic began, the vast majority of those who took part in the survey (81.2%) said it was ‘visiting family’.
‘Eating at cafes/ restaurants’ also scored highly with 60.30% choosing that, with ‘visiting beaches, parks and green spaces’ highlighted by 58.8% of survey entrants.
When it came to the impact of COVID-19 on job security, almost a third (30.4%) said they were either ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’. While 42.7% felt the same about how the virus could affect personal and household finances. Indeed, 50.75% of those who completed our survey said ‘I have cut back on my spending’. Encouragingly, 43% said ‘I am supporting local businesses more’.
GETTING OUT AND ABOUT
There was a noticeable response to our question ‘since lockdown, are you visiting your local town or city centre more or less often than before?’ 45% said they had visited ‘a lot less’ while 24.2% said they ‘haven’t visited it at all since lockdown’.
Perhaps linked to that was the fact 54.9% of respondents felt ‘not at all comfortable’ about taking public transport.
THE ‘NEW NORMALITY’ With many activities moving online, as a result people have had to learn to use online services, such as online shopping and video calls. 47.8% of you said you had ‘adapted very well’ to this with a further 37.9% saying they had ‘adapted fairly well’.
When asked ‘do you think the sense of community where you live has got stronger or weaker?’ 49.2% felt it was ‘neither stronger nor weaker’.