Week 5 of Government advised lockdown: Talking Medicines have now captured over 1000 responses (n=1165) across three surveys showing the public attitidues to COVID-19. Outreach engagement is via direct Facebook from the Medsmart® community to understand the attitudes, views and behaviour changes in the community towards COVID-19. This activity sits within the terms and conditions and privacy of the Medsmart® community in the UK.
In this update we focus on the trends from Week 1 through to Week 5 and how the public attitudes to the COVID-19 pandemic have changed over time. We share this data insight to add value to the hospital and NHS data, help others and raise awareness of the work we are doing.
The topline results are:
- The demographic of respondents is similar to previous weeks with the majority being aged 50+ (69.1%) and female (77.9%).
- There has been a slight increase in the number of people recovering from COVID-19 (2.7 to 4.5%) and those that have recovered from COVID-19 (1.7 to 3.8%) from Survey Week 3 to Survey Week 5.
- 94.7% of people are social distancing compared with 98% and 96% respectively in Survey Week 1 and Survey Week 3. Of those who are not practicing social distancing, interestingly, 46.2% of these respondents don’t believe it will help the problem.
- Of those that do not have COVID-19 but are practicing social distancing, fewer people are not leaving their homes at all (23.5%) compared to Survey Week 1 (57.9%) and Survey Week 3 (37.2%). There was an accompanying increase in the number of people leaving the house once a day (60.4% up from 30.4% Survey Week 1) and more than once a day (16.1% up from 7.1% in Survey Week 1).
- The most common reason for leaving the house was to exercise. This has increased (59.7%) from Survey Week 1 (44.3%) and Week 3 (50.5%).
- In Survey Week 1, 3 and 5, the majority of those not leaving the house got their supplies from friends and family. In each subsequent week since Survey Week 1, there has been an increase in those using online grocery ordering (17.9%, 25.6% and 31.5% in Survey Weeks 1, 3 and 5 respectively).
- 36.4% of people who think they may have COVID-19 are not isolating. This is an increase of 30.3% from Survey Week 3.
- Of those who think they may have COVID-19, the majority are getting their health advice from their GP (27.3%) or online (27.3%). The number of people using online sources has dropped from 45.3% in Survey Week 1.
- Of those that had COVID-19 and have now recovered the most commonly reported symptoms were dry cough and high temp. 91.7% of these individuals recieved no medical attention during their period of illness.
At Talking Medicines we are pushing the boundaries of innovation to engage with people to bring novel intelligence to the world of predictive and personalised medicines – driving the effective use of medicines around the world with social impact. We are hugely grateful for the high engagement across all age groups and thank all for taking part.
Stay home, stay safe, and stay on top of your medicine with the Medsmart App.
