Confidence in the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is dramatically down among those who answered a survey commissioned by The Sunday Times of Malta.
A total of 40% of respondents said they are ‘positive’ or ‘extremely positive’ with the way the government is handling the health situation caused by coronavirus in Malta, down from an impressive 83% confidence vote in the May survey.
More than half (54%) of respondents think there should be political accountability for the COVID-19 situation. The survey was carried out by EMCS Ltd, an advisory and market research firm, among a sample of 388 respondents between Tuesday and Friday. It has a margin of error of 5%.
During the past week, the numbers of COVID-19 cases in Malta continued shooting up after successive days of no new cases in the beginning of summer.
When asked to rank their opinion of the health situation, a total of 27% expressed negative views (15% said they had ‘negative’ views and 12% ‘extremely negative’ views) up from just 4% in May when the numbers of new cases were declining rapidly. A third of those questioned in the survey said they have neutral views (up from just 13% in May).
The public still believes the government is handling the economic situation caused by COVID-19 well.
While still positive with 62%, this represents a decrease of 11 percentage points over the previous survey conducted three months ago, and the lowest to date.
Just 40% said they are ‘positive’ with the way the government is handling situation
Almost three-quarters (74%) expect the government to come up with more financial assistance to support the economy. This represents a 10% increase from the study conducted at the end of May. Then, 64% had answered in the positive.
Furthermore, those having negative views about the economy and COVID-19 has almost doubled from 7% in May to 13%.
Just over half of those interviewed indicated they were currently in employment. A total of 4% said they are unemployed. Among the unemployed, 53% said they were made redundant following the COVID-19 outbreak.
Respondents were asked to rank their level of worriedness on a number of factors in relation to the current number of COVID-19 cases, with research showing that three-quarters are worried about the health of their loved ones.
A total of 54% are worried about their physical health while 45% are concerned about their mental health.
Just over a third say they were concerned about their current financial situation while 17% were worried about losing their job.
Where it comes to political accountability for the state of affairs, responses vary.
The majority of those who said they voted for the Labour Party (54%) say there should not be political accountability. Conversely, 33% believe there should be political accountability.
Among all other clusters, the majority believe there should be political accountability.