The poll, which was conducted by Gallup, found that 68 percent of Americans believe the COVID-19 situation in the U.S. is getting worse. According to the poll, 15 percent of Americans said the COVID-19 situation was getting better and 17 percent said it was staying the same.
The percentage of Americans that believe the COVID-19 situation is getting worse is the most the poll has recorded since November 2020. In a Gallup poll conducted in November, 73 percent of respondents said that they believed the COVID-19 situations was getting worse.
In November and the following months, the U.S. saw a surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths. According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at the start of November 2020, the U.S. was averaging around 100,000 new COVID-19 cases daily, but by mid-December, this number spiked to over 200,000.
The Gallup poll surveyed 3,553 U.S. adults from August 16 to August 22 and reported a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The most recent poll also noted that the percentage of Americans who believe COVID-19 is getting worse increased by 65 percent from earlier this summer. According to the poll, in June 2021, only 3 percent of Americans said the COVID-19 situation was getting worse, while 89 percent believed it was improving.
The poll also found that Americans’ concerns over catching the coronavirus is the highest since February 2020. According to the poll, 39 percent of respondents said that they are very or somewhat worried about becoming infected with COVID-19, while 58 percent said the same in February 2020.
The poll’s findings come as the U.S. has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations over the past month.
According to data from the CDC, since the start of July, the number of new daily COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. has continued to increase and as of August 31, the nation was averaging 149,767 new cases. The COVID-19 Delta variant has led to an increase in cases as health officials have said that it is more transmissible than any other variant of the virus.
Data from the CDC also show that at least 52.6 percent of Americans are considered fully vaccinated against the virus.
Amid the increase in COVID-19 cases over the past month, health officials have continued to stress the importance of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and a recent CDC study found that those who are unvaccinated are more than 20 times more likely to be hospitalized with the virus, when compared with those who are fully vaccinated.
Newsweek reached out to the CDC for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
