After England’s deputy chief medical officer warned on Sunday that the UK’s coronavirus lockdown could last for “six months or more”, experts say that prolonged social distancing measures – if not full-blown confinements – may well be necessary and that some permanent changes to behaviour are likely.

As the UK braced for its second week under lockdown following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s March 23 announcement of unprecedented curbs on peacetime public life, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries set out a medium-term timeline for how the British government might renew restrictions aimed at supressing the coronavirus.