Ten lockdown lessons to learn for next time

Five years ago , the UK was placed in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is now pertinent to ask, five years later , what did we learn? What were we taught by an ordeal that touched every aspect of our lives? And, in particular, what have the scientists got to tell us about the lessons of lockdown?.

The closing of schools, colleges and nurseries in March 2020 has become one of the most hotly debated decisions of the Covid lockdown.

At the time, it was feared children would become major vectors in transmission of Sars-CoV-2 virus.

This did not happen, though worries that reopening schools could threaten teachers with serious illness picked up from pupils persisted.

Professor Emma Thomson , director of the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research , said: “Science produced the major alternative to lockdown which was vaccination.” However, cuts to science budgets are happening globally, in particular in the US , but also in the UK and this puts us all at risk, Thomson said, adding of another pandemic: “The threat is now likely to be higher than at any time in human history because we move around the planet at greater speed and because of climate change and that threat outweighs almost every other major risk to human health.”.