One Year on From First Lockdown, Britain Grieves for COVID-19 Dead

Kew horticulturalist Joanna Bates tends to a 'Yellow Hearts to Remember' planting tribute to remember those lost to COVID-19, a year since the first British lockdown began due to the coronavirus disease pandemic, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, Britain, on March 22, 2021. Toby Melville/Reuters

LONDON—A year to the day after they were first ordered to stay at home to contain the spread of COVID-19, Britons will remember the more than 126,000 people who have lost their lives to the virus, a toll few could have imagined in March 2020.

People were being invited to observe a minute’s silence at midday (1200 GMT) to honour the dead, and to stand on their doorsteps at 8 p.m. holding candles or torches.