Lockdown is creating a stark digital divide in the UK, with 1.9 million households with no access to the internet and tens of millions more reliant on pay-as-you-go services to make phone calls or access healthcare, education and benefits online.
Frontline community groups and charities are warning that the digital exclusion of some of the UK’s poorest and most vulnerable households and communities is having a devastating effect across the country.
The scale of the problem is staggering,” says Helen Milner, the chief executive of the Good Things Foundation, a charity that tackles digital exclusion in the UK. “Pay-as-you-go customers without the means to buy data are finding themselves shut in their homes, facing social isolation with no means of communicating with the outside world.”
One woman living in London said she was having to choose between food and data. She spends almost half of her weekly household budget on top-up credit to allow her teenage daughters to access homeschooling resources.
“We live on just over £100 a week and before lockdown I was spending around £10 a week on top-up data and now it is costing around £30-40 every week” she said.
“We only have one phone between the three of us and I have to limit the time that they are online because I can’t afford any more. I’m also having to leave the house to buy data cards, which makes me very worried. I can’t get online long enough to send emails to the utility companies. I’ve told them we can only eat twice a day because I can’t afford any more food. ”
While the UK’s major internet providers have agreed to remove data caps on fixed-line broadband during the coronavirus pandemic, this does not apply to the estimated 1.9 million households with no internet data or the 25.9 million pay-as-you-go customers, who make up over a quarter of all mobile phone subscriptions in the UK.
Vulnerable groups such as elderly people, asylum seekers and refugees and households living in poverty are hit hardest by more expensive pay-as-you-go tariffs because they cannot afford wifi at home or fixed-term contracts.
“It’s not just about loneliness and isolation,” says Jane Caldwell, the chief executive of Age UK East London. “We had one man last week who hadn’t eaten in over a week because he didn’t have enough money to make a phone call and didn’t know who to go for help. We have elderly people who can’t get on council shielding lists because you have to register online. Others have ended up critically ill in hospital who have to beg to use a healthcare workers device just to make contact with their family.”
In Manchester, a community network said almost 75% of the 1,000 women they support are completely reliant on pay-as-you-go data services.
“Women in situations of domestic violence are particularly isolated,” says Rose Ssali from the Mama Health and Poverty Partnership. “Most of them have no access to their phones or the internet. We’re now trying to find funds to buy pay-as-you-go handsets with a bit of credit on them and hiding them in the food packages we’re dropping off so at least they have a way of calling someone if they are in trouble and need help. ”
Jo Dougherty, group leader for the Happy Baby Community, a group working with asylum seekers and victims of trafficking, said it had been trying to find ways to keep pregnant women and new mothers connected to vital healthcare services.
Quick GuideWill there be a second wave of coronavirus?
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In recent days the UK has seen a sudden sharp increase in Covid-19 infection numbers, leading to fears that a second wave of cases is beginning.
Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated – albeit more mildly – in subsequent flu pandemics. Until now that had been what was expected from Covid-19.
How and why multiple-wave outbreaks occur, and how subsequent waves of infection can be prevented, has become a staple of epidemiological modelling studies and pandemic preparation, which have looked at everything from social behaviour and health policy to vaccination and the buildup of community immunity, also known as herd immunity.
Is there evidence of coronavirus coming back in a second wave?
This is being watched very carefully. Without a vaccine, and with no widespread immunity to the new disease, one alarm is being sounded by the experience of Singapore, which has seen a sudden resurgence in infections despite being lauded for its early handling of the outbreak.
Although Singapore instituted a strong contact tracing system for its general population, the disease re-emerged in cramped dormitory accommodation used by thousands of foreign workers with inadequate hygiene facilities and shared canteens.
Singapore’s experience, although very specific, has demonstrated the ability of the disease to come back strongly in places where people are in close proximity and its ability to exploit any weakness in public health regimes set up to counter it.
In June 2020, Beijing suffered from a new cluster of coronavirus cases which caused authorities to re-implement restrictions that China had previously been able to lift. In the UK, the city of Leicester was unable to come out of lockdown because of the development of a new spike of coronavirus cases. Clusters also emerged in Melbourne, requiring a re-imposition of lockdown conditions.
What are experts worried about?
Conventional wisdom among scientists suggests second waves of resistant infections occur after the capacity for treatment and isolation becomes exhausted. In this case the concern is that the social and political consensus supporting lockdowns is being overtaken by public frustration and the urgent need to reopen economies.
However Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, says “‘Second wave’ isn’t a term that we would use at the current time, as the virus hasn’t gone away, it’s in our population, it has spread to 188 countries so far, and what we are seeing now is essentially localised spikes or a localised return of a large number of cases.”
The overall threat declines when susceptibility of the population to the disease falls below a certain threshold or when widespread vaccination becomes available.
In general terms the ratio of susceptible and immune individuals in a population at the end of one wave determines the potential magnitude of a subsequent wave. The worry is that with a vaccine still many months away, and the real rate of infection only being guessed at, populations worldwide remain highly vulnerable to both resurgence and subsequent waves.
“It’s no exaggeration to say this will fast become a life or death situation” she says.“The women we work with have literally no money. They cannot cannot call midwife services or the triage at the hospital when they go into labour. After birth they are alone in their rooms with a newborn, no money, and no way of calling or going online to get any support.”
In Stockport, Nicola Wallace Dean from the Starting Point Community Learning Partnership, has been urgently raising funds to try and get top-up data cards out to households in her community.
“We’ve started seeing signs go up in windows where people are begging someone to get some help or call a charity on their behalf because they can’t go online to find out where food banks are, call the GP or get their medication,” she said.
Marsha de Cordova, the shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, said it was unacceptable that people were having to choose accessing the internet and buying food.
“There is no more crucial time to ensure that everyone is connected and has access to the digital services, wifi and resources that they need,” she says. “The government must act now to reduce unequal provisions of phone and internet service during this crisis and ensure that no one is left behind as a result of digital exclusion.”
The government has recently launched a range of initiatives to try to tackle digital exclusion exacerbated by the pandemic. These include pledges to provide some disadvantaged teenagers with laptops and a new campaign, Devicesdotnow, that asks businesses to donate devices, sims and mobile hotspots.
“We recognise the importance of people being connected and that’s why we’ve already taken action to broker a major deal with the mobile and broadband companies to provide essential support for vulnerable consumers who may be affected by coronavirus,” said a spokesperson for the the department of digital, culture, media and sport.
Yet anti-poverty groups such as the Aple Collective, a network of people who have experienced poverty, say not enough is being done.
“We welcome the positive and compassionate moves being made by government and the telecommunications industry to seek to buffer the effects of Covid-19 on those on low incomes,” they said in a statement. “However, what is little mentioned so far are the voices and responses from those who are completely excluded from the digital world.”