Why a year of lockdown has made searching for the missing so hard

He sat on the deserted platform shortly after 10am and carefully removed his grey Adidas trainers. Then he jumped on to the train track and lay down, waiting.

The driver saw him too late. The 5ft 7in 20-something died instantly at London’s Clapham North underground station. It was 7 April last year; the death went largely unnoticed as the country suffered its first lockdown amid the peak of Covid-19’s first wave.

Twelve months on, and no one has come forward to claim the body. The police don’t even know his name. He went missing from somewhere, but where?

Weeks earlier, days before the first lockdown, a bespectacled studious looking teenager vanished from the town of Sidcup, Kent. Since 16 March 2020 there has been no sign of 16-year-old Ngo Van Nghia.

Tens of thousands of people have gone