Americans’ Concern About Catching CCP Virus Drops to Record Low

Three women take a class in the game pickleball with a group vaccinated against COVID-19 at the John Knox Village Continuing Care Retirement Community in Pompano Beach, Fla., on March 11, 2021. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The number of Americans who worry about becoming infected with the CCP virus has dropped to the lowest on record in March, according to Gallup.

Only 35 percent of the people surveyed from March 15 to 21 by the polling company said they were worried about catching the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

The pollster has surveyed sentiments related to the pandemic since April of last year, when 60 percent of Americans were concerned with becoming infected.

The percentage of those with this concern has steadily dropped since the start of the year, according to the poll. Americans have also grown less worried about access to testing and treatment; only 14 percent of the respondents told Gallup in March that they were either very or moderately concerned about access to testing. Only 22 percent were very or moderately concerned about access to hospital and health services.

The perception of the CCP virus situation overall has likewise reached a record high last month when 77 percent of the respondents said the situation was getting a little or a lot better. The number of those who thought the situation was getting a little or a lot worse dropped to a record low of 7 percent.

Despite the positive sentiment, a huge swath of Americans still says that the pandemic continues to cause at least a fair amount of disruption in their lives, according to the poll. Sixty-four percent, or nearly two in three Americans, said their lives were still disrupted, down slightly from 70 percent who said the same in February.

“Americans have become substantially less worried about contracting COVID-19 as a growing proportion of adults have been fully vaccinated and as satisfaction with the vaccine rollout has improved. These shifts have occurred while coronavirus infection rates have fallen substantially from highs reached in January of this year,” RJ Reinhart wrote in a statement announcing the results of the poll.

“Optimism about the COVID-19 situation has also spiked to a record high,” Reinhart said. “Gallup previously observed a meaningful relationship between Americans’ perceptions of the coronavirus situation and changes in reported numbers of daily new cases.”

The survey was conducted on the web on March 15–21, with a random sample of 3,905 adults aged 18 and older. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points, with a 95 percent confidence level.