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

Mark Dunford looks back to that very strange, worrying time.

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

00:17Organization 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 COVID 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

00:5712 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

01:20welcomed 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 Europe,

01:44it was mainly Italy where we saw a lot of cases initially. And then there was panic buying in

01:49the 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 floor. 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, we all

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

02:23which 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.

02:33But there was obviously the NHS were widely praised during this time. They were under

02:40immense pressure. And 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,

02:54and 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,

03:18not just in Sussex, were like ghost towns. And it was so sad to see. But it needed to be done

03:25to try and control the global pandemic. And as it slowly opened, people were still wearing masks,

03:31going in, still socially distancing, certain shops had rules. And it was, yeah, it was a

03:37different experience going shopping once we came out of lockdown. It's been a long,

03:41long time. COVID is still there in different forms, in some cases less effective, but we still

03:50have to be wary of it. But it's good to see businesses, hospitality sector all coming

03:55back to life now. And hopefully, that will remain.