A majority of Canadians remain concerned about COVID-19, but their worries about the virus have moderated and varied by age, according to a new survey.
The Ipsos poll, conducted exclusively for Global News between December 14 and 16, 2022, found that 61 percent of the 1,004 adults surveyed indicated that COVID-19 is a problem, and 70 percent disagreed with the idea that the virus “is not is a big deal.”
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However, the clear consensus that once existed among Canadians supporting strict public health measures and showing high levels of concern appears to have softened, says Ipsos senior vice-president Sean Simpson.
“What’s really interesting about the evolution of this disease and public opinion about the disease is that two years ago there was a pretty big consensus in Canada: COVID was a problem. There was very strong support for mandatory vaccinations, for travel restrictions and so on,” he said.
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“Now that we’re almost approaching the three-year mark, we don’t have anything close to a consensus, and we can’t even necessarily agree that this is a continuing concern.”
Two years ago, Simpson says, levels of concern about the virus and support for public health measures had support levels in the 80 to 90 percent range.
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Now, with just over 60 percent of Canadians citing the virus as a problem and just under 40 percent saying it is not, Canadians have become “more and more divided on the issue of COVID-19,” Simpson said.
Older Canadians are more likely to show a sense of concern about the virus, with three-quarters of those 55 and over saying they are worried, while 57 per cent of those between 35 and 54 agree and 50 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they were concerned.
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Simpson says this difference in opinion between age groups has been a consistent trend in COVID-19 polls over the past three years, reflecting the realities of the people most at risk from the virus.
“Older people are more vulnerable, younger people are generally less vulnerable to COVID-19… The older you are, the more likely you are to believe that COVID-19 is an ongoing problem for you” , he said.
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Regionally, respondents from the Prairies indicated the highest levels of concern at 68 percent, and those in Alberta had the lowest at 52 percent.
As concern about SARS-CoV-2 wanes in Canada, so does Canadians’ drive to get vaccines against COVID-19, according to the study.
Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they had recently received a COVID-19 vaccine, and another 14 percent said they intended to get one.
But nearly three in 10 say they do not intend to get vaccinated against COVID-19, representing a decline in the share of people who say they will get the vaccine, Simpson said.
“It was back up (to) 80, 85 percent when the vaccines first came out,” he said.
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“A lot of people agreed to get it either because they thought it was the right thing to do or because it was the threshold to being able to get your passport and do things without the stick or the carrot that they were.”
Federal data shows that more than 80 per cent of Canadians have received their first two doses of COVID-19 vaccines, but only 50 per cent have received at least one booster dose and only 30 per cent have had a booster in the past six months.
The results of the Ipsos survey reflect this waning enthusiasm for COVID-19 vaccines, Simpson said.
“A lot of people say, ‘That’s it, that’s enough for me. I did what I had to do and I’m not going to volunteer to get more pictures.’
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However, more Canadians say they have recently been vaccinated against COVID-19 than have received their flu shot, according to the survey results.
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This comes despite a significant and early wave of flu cases sweeping across Canada in the past few weeks, which has decimated the country’s already understaffed emergency departments and children’s hospitals.
Only four in 10 Canadians say they’ve had a flu shot, compared to 58 per cent who say they’ve recently received a COVID-19 shot.
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Meanwhile, the same percentage of those who had a flu shot this year — four in 10 — said they did not plan to get a flu shot this year, the survey found.
Once again, those who are older and more vulnerable to the flu are more likely to be injected than younger Canadians.
And while a majority of people – 64 per cent – say they are more likely to get a flu shot this year than last year, 14 per cent of Canadians say the opposite.
Overall, polling data suggests that COVID-19 and vaccination intentions have become more divisive as the world enters the fourth year of the pandemic, Simpson said.
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But they may also indicate that Canadians are feeling pandemic fatigue — a public attitude that will likely steer the government’s policy decisions toward implementing future restrictions even as the new, highly portable XBB.1.5 variant makes its way to Canada, he added.
“People just say, ‘You know what? I’m done talking about it, done with it. I just want to move on,” Simpson said.
“As a result of this kind of declining level of concern, declining level of interest, increasing apathy, governments are unlikely to take any major measures to introduce any policy interventions simply because public appetite has waned.”
Exclusive Global News Ipsos polls are protected by copyright. Information and/or data may only be rebroadcast or published with full and proper attribution and attribution to “Global News Ipsos”. This poll was conducted between December 14 and 16, 2022 on behalf of Global News. A sample of 1,004 Canadians over the age of 18 were interviewed for this study. The accuracy of Ipsos online polls is measured using a confidence interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, if all Canadians over the age of 18 were polled.
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