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Covid rules: Under-30s are ditching face masks as over-40s mix less after lockdown, Sage documents reveal

Figures presented to Sage committee also suggest the over-40s are more cautious about socialising since all restrictions were lifted on 19 July

People aged under 30 have ditched face masks at a faster rate than older people since the legal requirement to wear them was dropped last month, new research presented to the Government’s Sage committee suggests.

The proportion of 18 to 29-year-olds still wearing a face covering after 19 July is around 65 per cent, compared to 87 per cent when they were mandatory before that date.

By contrast, around 78 per cent of people in the 30-59 and 60+ age groups are continuing to wear face coverings – a much smaller drop from the same figure of 87 per cent before 19 July.

There are signs that, since the third wave fuelled by the Delta variant took off in the middle of June, older people have been much more cautious compared to younger age groups, despite vaccine take-up being higher in the over-40s.

The figures presented to experts on the Sage committee – which advises the Government on Covid-19 – are from the latest CoMix survey carried out by the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases. It has been tracking social contact in the UK since March 2020.

The paper’s authors stress that the data is based on people’s behaviour over just one week, and more time is needed to show a definite trend since the end of all lockdown restrictions.

“Wearing face coverings has clearly fallen since the easing of restrictions in England on July 19th, though overall it remains high,” the paper says. “There is some early indication that the fall in use of face coverings may be steeper in younger adults.”

The drop is particularly interesting because those aged 18 to 29 were early adopters of face masks during the initial phase of the epidemic in spring 2020, before they became mandatory. More than 25 per cent of this age group was wearing them in mid-May 2020, compared to around 20 per cent for over-30s.

The CoMix survey, which relates to behaviour in the week up to 2 August, also shows the over-40s are mixing less since 19 July, with a downward trend since the middle of June – when third-wave cases started to take off.

Overall, all adults and children are mixing less than they did last summer, when on average people made contact with more than six others. This summer the mean number of contacts is around three.

People aged 18 to 29 are meeting four others on average, while 30 to 39-year-olds and 40 to 49-year-olds are meeting just over three others. Those aged 50 and over are meeting fewer than three.

Lower contact rates among the over-40s could also be due to the start of the school summer holidays – meaning parents are mixing less at school gates – or to the fact that they are more likely to have gone away on holiday.

As would be expected, contact rates for under-18s have been falling since the end of term in July.

The proportion of children isolating has continued to decrease, but remained relatively high at almost 10 per cent for the week up to 2 August. The fraction of adults self-isolating has also fallen and is currently around 3-4 per cent.

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