NATIONS GET BAD RAP ON VIRUS
Voters have their say on Covid-19 response
>>BRUSSELS: Governments are fast losing support for their handling of the coronavirus outbreak from a public that widely believes death and infection figures to be higher than statistics show, a survey of six countries revealed yesterday.
Support for the federal government of the United States, the country with the most reported infections and deaths, dropped by four percentage points from mid-June, with 44% of respondents declaring themselves dissatisfied, said a report by the Kekst CNC communications consulting group.
In Britain, just over a third of respondents approved of their government’s actions, a three-point decline in one month, according to the report, based on an opinion poll conducted over five days in mid-July.
It also included France, Sweden, Japan and Germany.
“In most countries, this month, support for national governments is falling,” the report said.
The exception was France, where approval rose by six percentage points, yielding a dissatisfaction rate of 41%.
France, which has the world’s seventh-highest Covid-19 toll, has all but emerged from lockdown but has seen infections increase in recent days, prompting the government to order face masks in all enclosed public spaces.
In Sweden, which took a controversial soft approach to lockdown and has a higher toll than its neighbours, the prime minister’s approval rating has shrunk from a positive 7% to a neutral zero, the poll found.
People who participated in the survey — 1,000 per country polled — generally believed the coronavirus to be more widespread, and more deadly, than official figures show.
“Despite low incidence rates compared to earlier in the pandemic in most countries (with the exception of the US), people significantly overestimate the spread and fatality rate of the disease,” Kekst CNC said.
In Sweden and Britain, the public believed that 6% or 7% of people have died from the coronavirus, about 100 times the reported rate.