95% urban Indians support a lockdown to contain the spread of the Coronavirus

A vast majority of urban Indians are confident of the Government’s ability to handle the crisis

With India going in a 21-day lockdown to control the spread of the Coronavirus, YouGov’s latest data reveals that almost all urban Indians (95%) either strongly agree or agree that a lockdown will help fight the spread of COVID-19. The rest (5%) are either unsure or do not agree with this solution.

Data from the latest wave of YouGov’s weekly COVID-19 tracker further supports this view and shows the public is overwhelmingly confident of the Government’s ability to handle this crisis. Nine in ten (91%) said the Government is doing very well or fairly well in handling the issue of the Coronavirus, up from 87% last week. A very small number (7%) now thinks they are doing very or fairly badly, down from 10% last week.

At an overall level, we see the level of fear rising among Indian citizens. Six in ten Indians (64%) now say they are very or fairly scared about contracting the virus, up from 54% last week. 27% claim they are neither very scared or not at all scared about getting infected.

Notably, worry among North Indians has increased considerably over the past week, from 57% saying they are very scared or fairly scared about contracting the Coronavirus last week to 68% saying this now. Compared to the other regions, in South India fear is much lower- at 57%.

Thinking about the consequences of the Coronavirus, three in five residents (61%) feel the pandemic will lead to an economic recession. GenX (66%) and Baby Boomers (72%) are more likely to say this than their younger counterparts- GenZ (54%) and millennials (57%). Likewise, tier-1 residents are more likely to feel this way as compared to the other city tier residents.

Around half feel the Coronavirus will result in the hoarding of essential items (51%) or cause a large number of deaths due to infection (49%). Here again we see tier-1 city residents being more likely than tier-2 and tier-3 residents to say both these things (56% for each).Many see job losses as an outcome of the pandemic (45%). North India is more likely to foresee this outcome- at 50%, while West India is least likely (37%).

37% feel Government mandated food rationing will commence in the future. Men are more likely than women to say this (42% vs 31%).

A considerable proportion are expecting to see some extreme outcomes of this outbreak such as deaths in certain socio-economic groups (36%) and military enforcing lockdowns (27%). Few go on to say the COVID-19 outbreak could lead to riots (14%). For all these outcomes, a higher number of North Indians foresee these consequences as compared to residents in the other regions of India. The high fear levels among North Indians could be the reason they are expecting these consequences.

Data collected online by YouGov Omnibus among 1000 respondents in India between 24th and 27th March 2020 using YouGov’s panel of over 6 million people worldwide. Data is representative of the adult online population in the country.