The share of Americans worried about catching COVID-19 has fallen to its lowest level in Gallup polling since June 2021, the company reported Thursday.
Among respondents to Gallup’s latest monthly poll, 28% said they were very or somewhat worried about catching the coronavirus, the lowest since 17% said the same 17 months ago.
It’s also the second-lowest since Gallup started asking the question — weekly, at first — in April 2020.
“This collective comfort was 2½ years in the making, but Americans arrived at it fitfully after setbacks due to new variants that reignited concern, causing many to reconsider social distancing practices at least temporarily,” Gallup said.
The poll found that 78% of Americans, a new high, said it’s important to live their lives as normally as possible and avoid interruptions to work or business. Only 22% said it is important to “stay at home as much as possible to avoid contracting or spreading the coronavirus.”
Another 59%, also a new high in the polling, said they had made no effort to isolate themselves from people outside their households in the past 24 hours.
But more than half of Americans still do not believe “the pandemic is over,” Gallup noted.
Most respondents (62%) said they think COVID infections will increase either “a great deal” or “a moderate amount” in the current fall and winter months, a period when new strains of the virus emerged during the past two years.
The polling company also found that 40% of Americans said they had worn a face mask in the past week and 24% said they continued to avoid large crowds.
Gallup surveyed a random national sampling of 3,702 adults using self-administered web polls on Oct. 11-19. The margin of error was plus or minus 2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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