Lockdown affected people's sex lives in a variety of different ways with young people and those not living with a partner reporting the greatest changes, according to researchers from UCL, the University of Glasgow and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). The peer-reviewed paper, which is the largest national study of sexual behaviours since the beginning of the pandemic, is published today in BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections. It reports the findings from 6,654 people aged between 18 and 59 who took part in a Natsal-COVID web-panel survey undertaken by Ipsos MORI. Data was collected between 29 July and 10 August 2020 and participants were asked a series of questions about their sexual behaviour (including physical and virtual activities) during the first four months of lockdown. Professor Cath Mercer (UCL Institute for Global Health), co-first author of the paper, explained: "During the first nationwide lockdown, many people in Britain were unable to have physical contact with anyone outside their household and we wanted to find out how this affected their sexual behaviour. "What we found was a very varied picture depending on people's circumstances at the start of lockdown: for some people, their sex lives improved, for some it stayed the same, while for many it got worse. Although many adults, especially if they were living with a partner, continued to be sexually active and reported little change, for those who didn't live with a partner, Covid-19 restrictions were particularly detrimental." Altogether, 63% of adults reported having physical sex with someone after lockdown started, and of those people, three quarters (76%) said they were in cohabiting relationships.
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