Lockdown in Wales: How Covid-19 Tested Wales

In 2020 everyone’s lives were taken over by the Covid-19 pandemic. No-one was unaffected. The spring lockdown changed the way we lived, the way we looked at each other and at ourselves. Big questions engaged us all: PPE, the health service, care homes, shielding. We became used to new words: ‘social distancing’, ‘track and trace’, ‘ramping up’. We were agog as we watched our political leaders attempt to deal with ‘unprecedented events’ and make their daily television announcements. Yet appalling fatalities and ill health were also accompanied by some good things: a change of pace, new respect for the NHS, a sense of being part of something huge and necessary.

As the year closed amid new lockdowns and restrictions, and a long-awaited vaccine heaved into view for 2021, Lockdown Wales asks how Covid-19 affected us. It explores how it tested Wales, and the rest of the UK, after years of austerity policy had left the country with an ‘underlying condition’. It relates stories of ordinary people against a backdrop of political and social change. It asks questions of politicians in Westminster and Cardiff Bay. It wonders how Wales, its UK neighbours and the rest of the world work together. It concludes that there can be no going back, that a new way of doing things is needed now.

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