New poll shines light on COVID-19'S reach
ROUGHLY HALF OF CANADIANS KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAS BEEN INFECTED — TWICE AS MANY COMPARED TO MAY
Around half of Canada personally knows someone who has been infected with COVID-19, a new poll suggests, as the past year has seen the novel coronavirus go from being a distant concern to an ongoing domestic crisis.
The January web survey, conducted by Leger in partnership with the non-profit Association for Canadian Studies, found 50 per cent of those polled knew a friend, family member, co-worker or otherwise who had contracted COVID-19.
That number is up from 25 per cent in May, when daily case numbers were about a fifth of what they have been recently.
The share of people who know someone who had been infected with COVID-19 was higher in January in provinces hit harder by the disease, increasing to 59 per cent in Quebec, 58 per cent in Alberta and 51 per cent in Ontario. It was also far lower in Atlantic Canada, where it was relatively unchanged at 23 per cent, as the region has tried to build a “protective shield” around itself, noted Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS).
The poll, the findings of which were shared with the Post, also asked people about their personal level of concern of contracting COVID-19.
The survey found that 61.7 per cent of those who did not know anyone who had been infected said they were either somewhat or very afraid of being infected themselves. Meanwhile, 57.4 per cent of those who did know someone who had been infected answered that they were either somewhat or very afraid of contracting the disease.
That finding seems “very counterintuitive,” according to Jedwab. While he said the level of fear around getting COVID-19 has remained flat, being more or less concerned about being infected appears not to be a function of personal experience with the disease.
“I think the risk is that it just becomes numbers to us,” Jedwab said in an interview. “We risk losing sight of the human stories behind the people who've gotten the contagion and/or the people who've passed away from the contagion, and the effect on the families.”
The Acs/leger survey found people were most likely to have known a friend who was infected, at 47 per cent, unchanged from May. Friends was followed by a relative, at 39 per cent, up nine percentage points from May, and then co-worker at 19 per cent, which was up five percentage points.
It also found younger people were more likely to know someone who had contracted COVID-19. Of those polled, 61 per cent of people 18 to 34 reported knowing someone who had been infected, while 53 per cent of people 35 to 54 and 40 per cent of those 55 and over reported the same.
When the COVID-19 crisis began, it was also perceived as something that “disproportionately”
YOUNGER PEOPLE WERE MORE LIKELY TO KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAD … COVID-19.
affected seniors, Jedwab said. “And that's also changed quite significantly,” he added.
The survey was conducted via web panel between Jan. 15 and Jan. 17 with 1,516 Canadians. As it is an online survey, it is not considered random and cannot have a margin of error associated with it.
However, the findings also come as it was one year ago Monday — Jan. 25, 2020 — that the Ontario government informed the Public Health Agency of Canada about a “presumptive confirmed travel-related case” of COVID-19. It was the first case in Canada, attributed to a patient who had recently returned from Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the outbreak.
At the time, the federal government said that the risk of an outbreak of novel coronavirus in Canada was low. As of Sunday morning, there had been more than 740,000 total cases of COVID-19 reported in Canada, and more than 18,900 deaths.
“With vaccines rolling out in Canada and across the world, I am hopeful that the finish line will soon be in sight,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer, in a statement. “In the meantime, we must dig deep, continue to follow public health advice every day, and keep focused on our goals — so we can all finish this marathon and get back to enjoying the things that we did before the pandemic.”