How people with a vaccine spent their time

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released research into how people with a vaccine spent their time – one year on from the first UK lockdown (Great Britain, March 2021).

Time Use Survey data explains the differences between how people in Great Britain spent their time during coronavirus restrictions in March and April 2020 and March 2021.

  • People’s actions changed substantially between the first lockdown (March to April 2020) and March 2021, as they spent less time on indoor activities and more on outdoor activities and socialising in person, according to new analysis in the Time Use Survey data.
  • The behavioural changes over this period were largely related to changes in government restrictions and adapting to living in a pandemic, even when factoring in whether someone had a COVID-19 vaccine dose by March 2021; for example, those without a vaccine spent 10 more minutes socialising, while those who received a vaccine spent 7 more minutes socialising.
  • The main difference in changes in behaviour from 12 months ago between those with or without a vaccine dose were in changes to time spent working, explained by differences in age and occupation.
  • Among the non-vaccinated (more likely to be younger and employed in jobs outside of healthcare) there was an increase in time spent working, whereas there was little change for people with at least one vaccine dose.
  • While most home-based activities shifted back closer to patterns seen before the pandemic (such as watching less TV), we spent more time working from home compared with the first lockdown.

Longer hours spent working may explain why non-vaccinated people were sleeping about 35 minutes less than in the first lockdown; in comparison, those who had received a vaccine slept for a similar amount of time but spent more time resting, possibly as they were recovering from their vaccine.

You can read the ONS report on how people spend their time here.