Concern for COVID-19, pandemic precautions falls further: poll

Concern surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and safety precautions has yet to level off, according to a new survey published by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research on Tuesday.

In the poll, 25 percent of respondents said they were extremely or very worried about them or someone in their family becoming infected with COVID-19. Another 43 percent said they were not at all or not too worried about contracting the virus.

AP-NORC noted that concern over contracting the virus dropped somewhat among vaccinated adults while it rose somewhat more among the unvaccinated, though unvaccinated adults were still less concerned about becoming infected overall.

Fewer adults also said they were taking precautions when going outside their homes. When it came to specific precautions, 64 percent said they wore a mask outside of their homes often or sometimes, 62 percent said they avoided nonessential travel and 59 percent said they avoided others as much as possible.

These percentages of people who said they took these precautions all dropped by about 17 or 18 percentage points from when the poll was conducted in January. People who were vaccinated and older were more likely to still follow some precautions when compared to those who were unvaccinated or younger.

As the wave of cases caused by the omicron variant began to subside, states across the U.S. quickly moved to drop COVID-19 restrictions including mask mandates and other mitigation methods. At the end of February, the White House announced it was lifting its mask mandate for vaccinated employees.

However, health experts have cautioned that the U.S. may see another rise in cases due to the BA.2 variant that is causing cases to go up in Europe and Asia. Experts have predicted, however, that if the variant causes cases to rise again, it will not likely be another surge on the scale of the omicron and delta waves.

The AP-NORC poll was conducted March 17-21 and had a sample size of 1,082 adults. The results of the poll have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.