Change in fear levels in Indians- International COVID-19 tracker

Latest round-up of YouGov’s coronavirus survey results

With the coronavirus crisis looking like it may now be around its peak, YouGov’s 26 market COVID-19 tracker has registered little change in public opinion and behaviour since last week.

Fear levels

The greatest shift in fear levels in the latest survey wave has been in Sweden, where the number of people very or fairly scared of catching coronavirus fell seven points to 46%.

Australia and Finland also experienced six-point drops, to 49% and 32% respectively.

The biggest increases in fear took place in India and Canada, but of which saw a five-point increase to 62% and 65%, respectively.

Government approval

Approval among the French public for their government’s handling of the crisis has seen a notable improvement since last week, up 10 points to 48%. This is still down on the peak of 54% from late March, however, and is also the joint-third lowest figure of the 16 countries in which we measure this sentiment.

Spain and Japan continue to languish at the bottom of the list, with only 38% of Spaniards thinking their government has handled the outbreak well and 37% of Japanese people thinking the same in their country. Both of these figures are effectively unchanged since last week.

Behaviour changes

The most notable behaviour changes since last week are to do with face masks.

Having experienced a rapid increase in usage last week, the proportion of Singaporeans donning a protective covering continues to rise. Having previously made the huge jump from 37% to 73% in the space of one week, that figure has since risen a further 12 points to 85%.

There have also been big increases in mask usage in Canada (up 15 points to 31%) and Mexico (up 14 points to 60%).

These two countries also saw the largest increase in the number of people thinking the government should provide face masks, both seeing a seven-point increase on last week to 44% and 55% respectively.

Elsewhere there has also been a significant increase in the number of Danes saying that they are trying to avoid tourists this week – up 17 points to 56%.