Looking back to the UK's first national lockdown in 2020

SussexWorld

On March 23 2025 it will be five years since the UK went into its first ever lockdown. Mark Dunford takes us back to 2020 and talks us through the events that unfolded in Sussex and the whole of the UK.

Transcript

00:00I'm here to talk about the events that led up to that first lockdown in 2020 and my experiences

00:10during that time. So it was the 31st of December in 2019 when China alerted the World Health

00:16Organization to dozens of cases of a viral pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan. It

00:23was the 24th of January in 2020 when the UK Health Secretary at the time, Matt Hancock,

00:29he chaired the first COBRA meeting on COVID. And in the 31st of January, two COVID cases

00:34were confirmed in the UK. A woman in her 70s with underlying health issues became the first

00:40person to die in the UK of COVID on the 4th of March. And it was 11th of March when the

00:46World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. And on the 19th of March, Boris

00:52Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, said that they could turn the tide on the disease in

00:5612 weeks and send coronavirus packing. But then just four days later on the 23rd of

01:02March 2020, he announced that there would be full lockdown and people could only leave

01:09their home for strictly limited reasons. And the police were given powers to enforce rules.

01:15And then the furlough scheme was introduced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak. And it was broadly

01:19welcomed to protect jobs during lockdown. I was lucky enough not to be put on furlough

01:25during lockdown, but a lot of my team were at the time. And it was a very unsettling time. But

01:31it was strange how it all built up to that moment. At first, people didn't take it too

01:37seriously when they first heard about the strange virus from China. But then, as it slowly hit

01:43Europe, it was mainly Italy where we saw a lot of cases initially. And then it was panic buying

01:49in the UK, supermarket shelves were empty, toilet roll shortages. And then people started to get

01:56genuinely worried. And then we had the lockdown. And we saw empty streets, people working from

02:02home, people on furlough, as I said, and feeling like at the end of the world. And suddenly Zoom

02:07came to the fore. Everybody was talking, seeing their friends, family, all on Zoom. The only time

02:14we got to go out, we were allowed to go out on daily walks. And me, my wife and my son,

02:19we all went out for daily walks. And it was nice to discover parts of Crawley I hadn't seen before,

02:24which is obviously where I live, the town where I live. And I think a lot of people discovered that

02:29and it was great to get that daily exercise, something that we might not have done before.

02:34But there was obviously the NHS were widely praised during this time. They were under

02:40immense pressure. And one of the, I remember the first time on the Thursday night when we did the

02:47clap for carers for the NHS. And we went out into our street and people were banging pots and pans.

02:55And it was genuinely quite emotional hearing that noise. You could hear it from so far.

02:59When the UK went into lockdown, we saw the hospitality sector all closed, so hotels,

03:06bars, restaurants. We also saw gyms closed, townshops had to close, supermarkets remained

03:13open and other shops that sold essential items. But town centres across the country, not just in

03:19Sussex, were like ghost towns. And it was so sad to see. But it needed to be done to try and control

03:26the global pandemic. And as it slowly opened, people were still wearing masks, going in, still

03:32socially distancing, certain shops had rules. And it was, yeah, it was a different experience going

03:38shopping once we came out of lockdown. It's been a long, long time. COVID is still there

03:46in different forms, in some cases less effective, but we still have to be wary of it. But it's good

03:52to see businesses, hospitality sector all coming back to life now. And hopefully that will remain.

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