55% Pakistanis say coronavirus threat exaggerated — Gallup survey

A man wearing a face mask as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus shops at the Raja Bazar in Rawalpindi on July 22, 2020. (AFP/File)

• In an opinion poll conducted in the first half of July, 37 percent people maintained that COVID-19 was a foreign conspiracy
• While 16 percent respondents said they knew someone who had died of the disease, 89 percent were not vaccinated at all

ISLAMABAD: More than half of Pakistan's population believes the threat of coronavirus is exaggerated, reveals a new public survey conducted by Gallup Pakistan, though the proportion of such individuals has decreased from 64 percent in March to 55 percent in July.
According to the details of the survey released on Thursday, 37 percent people in the country consider COVID-19 to be a foreign conspiracy.
The belief, which was found to be most prevalent among the residents of Sindh and female respondents, was previously held by 45 percent of the population.
In a country that lost over 23,000 people to the viral disease since reporting its first coronavirus case in February 2020, 16 percent people claimed they knew someone who had lost their life to COVID-19. Yet about nine in 10 Pakistanis (89 percent) had not been vaccinated at all.
Most of those who had benefited from the country's immunization drive resided in urban centers (19 percent) while only seven percent of those inoculated belonged to rural areas.
Gallup Pakistan claimed 59 percent of people did not know how to register themselves for vaccination, reflecting a lack of an effective awareness campaign benefiting the general public.
However, it also reported that 76 percent Pakistanis thought the government was controlling the pandemic situation well.
The survey that was conducted in the first half of July reflected that people had been relying on government or NGO assistance to cover their basic household needs.
Many of them were also forced to utilize their savings to cover their expenses.
Some of the respondents complained of reducing the number or size of meals for their household members to meet the economic challenges accompanying the pandemic.
Gallup Pakistan maintained, however, the economic impact of the disease had slightly improved since it conducted its last survey
Pakistan has witnessed yet another spike in the number of coronavirus cases, reporting 5,661 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 60 deaths caused by the disease in the last 24 hours.
The country has administered more than 34 million doses of various coronavirus vaccines since it began its immunization campaign in February.
However, a little more than 7.86 million have so far been fully vaccinated in Pakistan.