Government 'Acted Appropriately' on COVID-19 Crisis, Majority of Filipinos Say in Survey
A majority of Filipinos say the government has acted appropriately on the COVID-19 crisis. This is according to a survey by online statistics portal Statista.
In a report released on March 27, 2020, 69 percent of survey respondents said the government “acted appropriately” regarding the coronavirus outbreak. Twenty-three percent said the government has “not acted sufficiently,” while seven percent said it has “overreacted.” Only one percent responded that the government “has not acted at all.”
However, the survey was conducted between February 14 to 17, 2020. It involved 4,111 respondents.
For context, only three confirmed cases had been recorded in the Philippines on the days the survey was taken. On January 31, the government had imposed a travel ban on all Chinese nationals from the Chinese province of Hubei, where Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus, is located. Two days later, on February 2, foreign travelers who visited China, Hong Kong, and Macau in the last 14 days were banned from entering the country. The government had likewise barred Filipinos from traveling to the same three territories by that time.
The ban was extended to travelers to and from Taiwan on February 10, but was quickly lifted a few days later on February 15 after the policy triggered a protest from the territory.
Meanwhile, the Philippines ranks third among countries surveyed in Asia that are most worried about the coronavirus. In the Statista survey, 61 percent of those polled in the country said they worried a lot about the virus. Individuals surveyed in Vietnam and Malaysia are the most worried about the coronavirus, at 69 percent and 66 percent respectively.
Indonesia is just behind the Philippines at 56 percent, followed by Hong Kong (55 percent), Thailand and Singapore (both at 46 percent), Japan at 44 percent. In South Korea, only 32 percent said they were worried a lot about the virus.
