UK faces 'Covid decade' due to damage done by pandemic, says report | Coronavirus | The... - 0 views
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Britain faces a “Covid decade” of social and cultural upheaval marked by growing inequality and deepening economic deprivation, a landmark review has concluded.
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Major changes to the way society is run in the wake of the pandemic are needed to mitigate the impact of the “long shadow” cast by the virus, including declining public trust and an explosion in mental illness, the British Academy report found.
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the report brings together more than 200 academic social science and humanities experts and hundreds of research projects. It was set up last year at the behest of the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance.
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Too many people experienced the pandemic in poor housing, were badly equipped for home schooling and home working and vulnerable to poor mental health, and found themselves at high risk of economic insecurity, the report said, pointing out that “many people are ‘newly poor’ and only one month’s wages away from poverty”.
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“With the advent of vaccines and the imminent ending of lockdowns, we might think that the impact of Covid-19 is coming to an end. This would be wrong. We are in a Covid decade: the social, economic and cultural effects of the pandemic will cast a long shadow into the future – perhaps longer than a decade,” it said.
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The British Academy cautions against overoptimism as the UK thinks about recovery from Covid, however, warning that it is “no ordinary crisis” that can be fixed by a return to normal, but one that thrived amid pre-existing social deprivations and inequalities and which has exposed deep-seated flaws in public policy.
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The report calls for renewed spending on community services, local government, social care and local charities, especially in deprived areas, noting that some of the most effective responses to Covid have been at a local level
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Investment was need to erase the digital divide and establish internet access as a “critical, life-changing public service”.