95 per cent of urban Indians either ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ that a lockdown will help fight the spread of Covid-19, found YouGov’s latest data released on Tuesday.

In the statement, YouGov also said that the remaning five per cent are either unsure or do not agree with this solution.

The data was collected online by YouGov Omnibus among 1000 respondents in India between March 24 and March 27, using YouGov’s panel of over six million people worldwide, it said. Data is representative of the adult online population in the country, it added.

“Data from the latest wave of YouGov’s weekly Covid-19 tracker further supports this view and shows the public is overwhelmingly confident of the Government’s ability to handle this crisis. Nine in ten (91 per cent) said the Government is doing very well or fairly well in handling the issue of the Coronavirus, up from 87 per cent last week. A very small number (7 per cent) now thinks they are doing very or fairly badly, down from 10 per cent last week,” it found.

At an overall level, it also found that the level of fear is rising among Indians. Six in ten Indians (64 per cent) now say they are very or fairly scared about contracting the virus, up from 54 per cent last week. 27 per cent claim they are neither very scared or not at all scared about getting infected, it found.

Notably, worry among North Indians has increased considerably over the past week, from 57 per cent saying they are very scared or fairly scared about contracting the Coronavirus last week to 68 per cent saying this now. Compared to the other regions, in South India fear is much lower- at 57 per cent, it found.

Thinking about the consequences of the Coronavirus, three in five residents (61 per cent) feel the pandemic will lead to an economic recession. GenX (66 per cent) and Baby Boomers (72 per cent) are more likely to say this than their younger counterparts- GenZ (54 per cent) and millennials (57 per cent), it found. Likewise, tier-1 residents are more likely to feel this way as compared to the other city tier residents, it said.

Around half feel the Coronavirus will result in the hoarding of essential items (51 per cent) or cause a large number of deaths due to infection (49 per cent), YouGov found. “Here again we see tier-1 city residents being more likely than tier-2 and tier-3 residents to say both these things (56 per cent for each).Many see job losses as an outcome of the pandemic (45 per cent). North India is more likely to foresee this outcome- at 50 per cent, while West India is least likely (37 per cent).”

37 per cent feel Government mandated food rationing will commence in the future. Men are more likely than women to say this (42 per cent vs 31 per cent).

A considerable proportion are expecting to see some extreme outcomes of this outbreak such as deaths in certain socio-economic groups (36 per cent) and military enforcing lockdowns (27 per cent). Few go on to say the Covid-19 outbreak could lead to riots (14 per cent), it said. For all these outcomes, a higher number of North Indians foresee these consequences as compared to residents in the other regions of India, it said. The high fear levels among North Indians could be the reason they are expecting these consequences, it added.

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