Do people test and isolate when they have symptoms of covid-19? Do they recognise the symptoms of the virus? And how well do the tracing measures work? To answer these questions, and on behalf of BMG Research we contributed to a 37-wave online survey from 2 March 2020 to 27 January 2021. We asked a UK based and nationally representative sample of 53,880 people aged 16 years or older and gathered 74,697 responses in total, with about 2,000 participants in each wave.

The results showed about only half of the participants know the symptoms of covid-19 (50.8% in the last wave from 25-27 January 2021, and 51.5% across all waves). Across all waves, only 42.5% of the participants indicated they adhere to the rules on self-isolation, however, this number increased in the last wave to 51.8%. Also, the requests for tests increased to 22.2% in the last wave, from 18% in total. The willingness to share details of contacts also slightly increased from 79.1% across all waves to 81.9% in the last one. This non-adherence to the measures is above average among men, younger people, people with children, lower socioeconomic grade, those experiencing financial hardship and working in a key sector.

The complete study can be found here.