Last month, I reported how a Gallup poll showed Americans' concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic have dipped. This was before the emergence of the Omicron variant in the United States and several other countries around the world. This week, another poll was published that details Americans' worries regarding their children contracting coronavirus and how it differs between parents of vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
A new Gallup poll published Friday found that parents' worries about their children contracting the Wuhan coronavirus have eased slightly. Forty-five percent of respondents said they worry their child will get COVID-19, down from September's 53 percent.
"The existence of the vaccine in general, regardless of whether their own child is vaccinated, could be a factor in parents' decreased worry, with some Americans believing the vaccine could reduce COVID-19 transmission in society more generally," the survey write-up stated. "Or it may be related to the fact that COVID-19 causes less severe illness and fewer hospitalizations for children than adults."
The write-up also noted that worry is higher among parents of younger children rather than older children. In the results, almost half of parents of children ages 5 to 11 are worried about their child contracting COVID-19, compared to 35 percent and 38 percent of parents of 12 to 15-year-olds and 16 to 18-year-olds, respectively.
The survey found that parents of unvaccinated children are less worried about their children contracting the virus than parents of vaccinated children, at 17 percent and 63 percent, respectively.
Additionally, 37 percent of parents said they worry they will catch COVID-19, compared to October's 40 percent and September's 39 percent.
The survey, conducted from Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, coincided with the onset of some of the first Omicron variant cases in the United States. The survey sampled 4,034 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
