The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom from July 2020 to December 2020.
There are significant differences in the legislation and the reporting between the countries of the UK: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. The numbers of cases and deaths are reported on a Government web site updated daily during the pandemic. The UK-wide COVID Symptom Study based on surveys of four million participants, endorsed by authorities in Scotland and Wales, run by health science company ZOE, and analysed by King's College London researchers, publishes daily estimates of the number of new and total current COVID-19 infections (excluding care homes) in UK regions, without restriction to only laboratory-confirmed cases.
Timeline
July 2020
1 July
Over two days, 12,000 job losses have been announced in the retail and aviation industry as a result of the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. Conservative MP Giles Watling warns of the impact on theatres if they have to cancel the pantomime season; his comments come after several theatres announced plans to cancel pantomimes over the coming winter season.
2 July
Casual Dining Group, the owner of Café Rouge and Bella Italia, goes into administration with the loss of 1,900 of the 6,000 staff employed by the outlets, while Airbus announces the loss of 2,730 jobs at two UK factories. The weekly ONS household survey for 14–27 June estimates that new infections were occurring in England at a rate of 25,000 per week, a slight increase on their previous report. Blood samples show around 6% of people have antibodies.
3 July
The UK government published a list of 59 countries for which quarantine will not apply when arriving back in England as from 10 July. They include Greece, France, Belgium and Spain, but Portugal and the United States are among those not on the list. These changes do not apply to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, where quarantine restrictions remain in place for all arrivals from outside the UK. The UK government rushed The Health Protection (COVID-19, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020 through parliament to give police the powers to enforce lockdown restrictions in Leicester as from 4 July.
4 July
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2020 came into force in England, replacing and relaxing the previous Lockdown Regulations (SI 350), and giving the Secretary of State powers to make declarations restricting access to public outdoor places. Leicester was excluded from the relaxations due to its high rate of COVID-19, with more stringent regulations in force. The COVID Symptom Study reports that the two-week average number of new daily cases for the two weeks to 4 July 2020 was no lower than for the previous week; rates of new COVID cases were no longer declining. After Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage posted a picture of himself in a pub on Twitter a fortnight after attending a rally in support of US President Donald Trump in the United States, Ed Davey, the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, wrote to Kent Police asking them to investigate whether Farage had breached lockdown restrictions. On the same day, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's father, Stanley, had to defend a trip to Greece which critics say broke restrictions. Augusto Santos Silva, the Foreign minister of Portugal, criticised the UK's decision to exclude his country from the list of countries from where travellers do not have to quarantine when returning to the UK as "absurd". The National Gallery, set to be the first museum to reopen to the public on 8 July, gave a preview to the media of its new safety measures. The UK held a minute's silence to remember those who had died of COVID-19.
5 July
The UK stages a national round of applause to mark the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service; a Supermarine Spitfire flypast over several hospitals in the east of England also takes place to mark the occasion.