Helen Dodd’s young sons invented some new games this summer. “We had a paddling pool in the garden and they filled it with colored balls and sat on and squashed the red ones,” she said. “Then they took some chalk and drew red virus shapes on the pavement outside my house, in a kind of hopscotch. They did it in the street so other kids could join in playing Splat the Virus.” They also played a game in which Flynn, 5, would climb on eight-year-old Corben’s back and cling on like a bug till Corben shouted “antibiotics”, at which point the younger boy would fall off defeated.

The coronavirus has become a new monster.