Americans hoped for the best this year, concerning the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but they are still worried.
According to Gallup’s November poll, 47% of U.S. adults named COVID-19/other viruses as the country’s top health problem. For comparison, in November 2020, COVID-19/other viruses accounted for 69% of respondents' answer to the most urgent health issue.
“Even before the omicron variant emerged as a potential threat to recent progress in the nation’s recovery from the pandemic, COVID-19 was still Americans’ primary health concern,” researchers said, according to the Gallup website. “Only AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s received a higher percentage of mentions than COVID-19 does today. Whether concern about the virus plummets further next year or trails off slowly, as concern about AIDS did in the 1990s, may depend on how effective vaccines and medical treatments are at keeping up with new variants and allowing the country, if not the world, to return to its pre-pandemic normal.”
Survey respondents said access to health care (11%) and cost (9%) are the next most urgent health problems.
Vaccines were also cited by 6% of all U.S. adults as a top health concern, according to Gallup.
Only one illness apart from COVID-19 has ever ranked as Americans’ leading health issue: AIDS, named by 62% of respondents in 1987.
