English city centers are still a long way from the pre-Govt

The UK lifted all restrictions on the Govt for a month on Thursday. Except Duty to isolate itself for communication cases The British economy reopened completely on July 19 after being maintained for a month and wearing a mask in a closed space. This “Independence Day” was named after Prime Minister Boris Johnson However, not with a radical change in behavior.

Many mobile indicators show that the British were wary of their behavior. Data collected by Google from its users indicates that public transport ridership is 29% lower than it was before. The same goes for work trips, which are 40% cheaper. These data have changed slightly since the beginning of July, indicating that the difference is not explained only by the summer holidays.

Maintaining delivery

The “Center for Cities” think tank made the same observation in a study published last week. The workers did not return to the office in droves, It punishes the economic activity of city centers . However, on July 19, the government withdrew its recommendation in favor of telecommunications, giving companies the freedom to organize their employees’ time.

As the “Center for Cities” refers to, big cities are far from regaining their performance. Labor attendance in London is only 35% higher than it was before the Govt. Other major cities, such as Birmingham or Manchester (46 to 47% of pre-Govt. Cities that benefit from the arrival of tourists, such as Blackpool or Bournemouth, are coastal cities. Even a city like Brighton has just 78% more attendance than it had before the epidemic.

26% online sales

The exit of workers is not the only reason. Consumers are coming down to stores, while the share of online sales is 26% of total sales in June, four points higher than in February 2020. Springboard data used by the National Office for British Statistics (ONS) on August 7 shows that stores are 80% higher than they were in the same period in 2019.

The difference is even greater if only the downtown businesses are taken into account. The British Retail Federation confirmed this with its attendance indicator, which also showed a two-point decline in city centers between June and July, with less than 35% of visits before the cove.

No infections

Archaeologists are still struggling to gather enough evidence before reaching the final conclusions about the severity of the disease. Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College London, made the corrections in an interview with the Financial Times after forecasting 100,000 cases in mid-August, as the UK currently says about 30,000 cases a day. “I spoke very fast,” he admitted. His prediction was based on the assumption that “people increase their contact when restrictions are relaxed.”

So far, this has not been the case, with each person being in contact with an average of 3.7 people a day. With the start of the school year and the return of workers to office, we will have to wait until the fall for further results.