The country that stands out most this week in YouGov's 26-market COVID-19 tracker is Indonesia. Despite the nation having ordered large scale lockdowns in between the previous and most recent surveys, attitudes towards the crisis actually seem to be getting more relaxed.
Most notably, the proportion of people saying they are very or fairly scared of catching coronavirus has fallen by 10 percentage points since the last survey, to 75%.
Additionally, across all behavioural changes we are tracking Indonesians are now less likely to be taking precautions. The most marked difference is in avoiding physical contact with tourists, with the number of people doing so falling from 63% to 48%.
The number of Indonesians avoiding eating raw or uncooked meats fell from 37% to 27%, the number avoiding going to work is down to 55% from 63% and only 77% are avoiding crowded places where before it had been 84%.
This week’s biggest increases in fear have been in Japan and Sweden, which are up 15-16 percentage points on last week. In the case of Japan this pushes the number of people very or fairly afraid they will catch the disease to 85%, the third highest among the countries surveyed. Swedes had previously been the least concerned of all nations about the virus, and even with the big increase are still in the bottom five, at 47%.
Sizeable fear increases also took place in Denmark (rising 11 points to 53%) and Mexico (up 10 points to 45%).
As well as the aforementioned falling fear levels in Indonesia, Norway too saw citizens becoming less afraid of catching the virus, dropping 48% to 38%.
In terms of particularly large national behaviour shifts…
Singaporeans increasing support government quarantine action
Singapore saw a large increase in the number of people now saying they would support greater quarantine measures, likely reflecting the increasing numbers of people afraid of catching the disease (up 6pts to 73%).
The proportion of Singaporeans supporting quarantining any location an infected person had been has risen from 30% to 46%, while the number who back isolating anyone who had come into contact with a carrier is up from 67% to 79%. In both cases this represents the highest level of support for these measures so far recorded in the country, after weeks of stability.
Photo: Getty