The Pew Research Center conducted this to learn Americans’ perspectives on coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines. For this analysis, we surveyed 10,133 U. S. adults from February 7-11, 2024.
All of those who participated in the survey are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel recruited through a national random sampling of residential addresses. In this way, almost all U. S. adults have a chance of being selected. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U. S. adult population. By gender, race, ethnicity, party affiliation, schooling, and other categories, the U. S. is based on gender, race, ethnicity, party affiliation, schooling, and other categories. Learn more about the ATP methodology.
Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that just 20% of Americans view the coronavirus as a major threat to the health of the U.S. population today and only 10% are very concerned they will get it and require hospitalization. This data represents a low ebb of public concern about the virus that reached its height in the summer and fall of 2020, when as many as two-thirds of Americans viewed COVID-19 as a major threat to public health.
Only 28% of U. S. adults say they have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) protected against severe illness last fall. This is in stark contrast to the spring and summer of 2021, when long lines and limited availability characterized the initial rollout of the first COVID-19 vaccines. The majority of U. S. adults (69%) had been fully vaccinated by August 2021.
Underscoring the limited demand for the updated COVID-19 vaccines, a larger share of U.S. adults say they’ve gotten a flu shot in the last six months than the updated coronavirus vaccine (44% vs. 28%). And despite a public health push encouraging adults to get both vaccines at the same time, almost half of those who received a flu shot from a health care provider chose not to get the updated COVID-19 vaccine.
The vast majority of Americans have some level of protection from the coronavirus because of vaccination, prior infection or a combination of the two. This has led to a decline in severe illness from the disease.
Still, the virus continues to circulate widely in the United States, with wastewater data suggesting that cases in the early part of 2024 were among the highest they have been since the first omicron wave in 2022.
Long COVID is one of the considerations of public fitness experts. Long COVID refers to a series of symptoms such as fatigue and brain fog that last more than a month after a COVID-19 infection.
The survey, conducted among 10,133 U. S. adults Feb. 7-11, 2024, found that 50% of Americans say it is very important or very important for medical researchers and health care providers to understand and treat long COVID; 27% is a less vital topic and 22% of Americans say they haven’t heard of COVID in a long time.
Partisanship remains one of the most difficult points influencing opinions about COVID-19 vaccines and the virus, but the magnitude and nature of the differences between Republicans and Democrats have evolved since the early stages of the outbreak.
For instance, the gap between the shares of Democrats and Republicans who view the coronavirus as a major threat to public health has fallen from 37 percentage points in May 2022 to 16 points today. In the pandemic’s first year, Democrats were routinely about 40 points more likely than Republicans to view the coronavirus as a major threat to the health of the U.S. population. This gap has waned as overall levels of concern have fallen.
When it comes to vaccination, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents remain more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to say they’ve received an updated COVID-19 vaccine (42% vs. 15%). This 27-point gap in recent vaccination is about the same as in January 2022 when 62% of Democrats and 33% of Republicans said they were up to date (i.e., fully vaccinated and recently boosted).
Partisanship aside, age is still very important in coronavirus-like attitudes and behaviors. And the intersection of partisanship and age shows one of the biggest recent shifts in the public’s reaction to the outbreak: a developing divergence between older Republicans and Democrats on vaccination, explored below.
Older adults continue to be one of the most at-risk groups for severe illness and death from COVID-19.
When vaccines first became available in 2021, a large majority of Republicans and Democrats over the age of 65 reported receiving the vaccine. But as more doses are needed, vaccine uptake among older Republicans has declined at a faster rate than among seniors. Democrats.
In the existing poll, 66% of Democrats 65 and older say they have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 24% of Republicans 65 and older.
This 42-point partisan hole is much wider than at other times since the outbreak began. For example, in August 2021, 93% of older Democrats and 78% of older Republicans reported getting all the vaccines needed to be fully vaccinated (a 15-point difference). Go to the appendix for more details.
The impact of age is also striking when looking within political parties.
Among Democrats, about 3 in 10 adults under 50 have gotten an updated COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 48% of those ages 50 to 64 and 66% of Democrats 65 and older.
The age differences within the Republican Party point in the same direction, although they are much more modest, reflecting, in part, the low overall vaccination rates.
Similar shares of White (28%), Black (29%) and Hispanic (27%) adults say they have gotten the updated vaccine. English-speaking Asian adults (35%) are slightly more likely to report receiving the updated vaccine.
As in previous Center surveys, there are racial and ethnic differences in vaccination among Democrats.
For example, 50% of white Democrats and 42% of English-speaking Asian Democrats say they have won the updated vaccine, compared to declining proportions of Black and Hispanic Democrats (32% each).
Half of Americans say it’s incredibly or very important for medical researchers and health care providers to identify and treat long COVID, given all the other priorities they face.
About two-in-ten (21%) say it’s vital for doctors to combat long COVID, while 6% say it’s not too vital or not at all. 22% say they haven’t heard of long COVID.
More Democrats (61%) than Republicans (37%) say it is extremely or very important for medical researchers and health care providers to understand and treat long COVID.
For most women (56%) this is incredibly or very important; a smaller proportion of men (44%) say the same. The CDC has reported that women are more likely than men to develop long COVID symptoms.
Knowledge of long COVID also influences opinion about its importance: those who have heard a lot about long COVID are more likely than those who have heard little about it to say that it is incredibly or very good for fitness professionals to deal with it (76% vs. 60%).
One in Americans now say the coronavirus poses a top health risk to the U. S. population, up from 67% in July 2020.
Concerns about the coronavirus as a primary risk to the U. S. economy have also diminished sharply. Today, 23% of Americans are a primary risk to the economy, up from 88% in May 2020. The pandemic caused an economic recession in 2020 and a spike in unemployment that reached the highest levels since the Great Recession. .
Federal policy on the coronavirus has changed as public concern – and the incidence of severe illness – has fallen. The Biden administration ended the public health emergency for the coronavirus pandemic in May 2023. And the CDC recently released updated guidelines with shorter isolation periods for adults testing positive for the disease.
While significant partisan differences characterized the outlook that the coronavirus was a primary public health risk for much of the pandemic, those differences were much narrower when it came to viewing the virus as a primary risk to the economy. In the existing poll, only a 6-point gap separates Republicans and Democrats in this regard (20% vs. 26%, respectively), similar to the 9-point gap between parties observed in May 2022.
About a quarter of Americans (27%) are very or somewhat concerned about getting a serious case of COVID-19 that would require hospitalization. A somewhat higher share (40%) say they are very or somewhat concerned they might spread the coronavirus to other people without knowing it.
Fear levels about the transmission or spread of the coronavirus are about the same as in March 2023 and remain particularly lower than at the start of the pandemic.
The share of Americans who are very worried or very worried about getting a severe case is 26 points lower than it was in November 2020, before the COVID-19 vaccine was available. audience. And the percentage of Americans who are at least unknowingly involved in the spread of COVID-19 has dropped 24 points since November 2020.
Still, existing knowledge shows how much of a fear the virus continues to be in the lives of many Americans, more than four years after the first coronavirus cases emerged in the United States.
Consistent with past Center surveys, there are demographic and political differences in personal concern about getting a serious case of COVID-19 and unknowingly spreading the virus:
Some of the teams most involved non-publicly about the possibility of contracting a severe case of COVID-19 are also among the teams most involved about the public health risk posed by the coronavirus. For example, Black adults and low-income adults express more concerns about the effect of the coronavirus on their public and personal health than white and high-income adults.
The survey found that 44% of American adults say they have gotten a flu shot since August. That’s down from last March, when 49% of Americans said they had recently gotten a flu shot.
Adoption varies depending on the following factors:
Both the flu vaccine and current COVID-19 vaccines are intended to protect against serious illness, but Americans use those vaccines differently.
Americans are more likely to report receiving a flu vaccine this year than the updated COVID-19 vaccine (44% vs. 28%).
This vaccination gap between the flu vaccine and the updated COVID-19 vaccine is more pronounced among Republicans than Democrats.
Republicans are more than twice as likely to say they have gotten a flu shot since August as they are to say they have received an updated COVID-19 vaccine (37% vs. 15%). The difference is more modest (53% vs. 42%).
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