Ipsos published the fourth edition of its monthly report called “Ipsos Keys”, a measurement that aims to provide a current look at national and citizen events.
In this version, the opinion of 801 people over 18 years of age, from all regions of the country, was consulted. For this installment, the topic analyzed was: Ómicron in Chile.
The perception of severity of the Omicron variant had an increase of 11 percentage points compared to December 2021. In January 2022, 75% considered the arrival of this strain as “serious”, being women (81%) and people over 50 years old (82%), who tend to have a higher perception of severity.
Despite this rise, 53% of those surveyed said they felt protected against the virus, with people vaccinated with booster doses feeling the safest against the Omicron variant (79%), followed by those who have one or two dose where the feeling of protection reaches 70%, and finally those who have not received any vaccine (50%).
“A large part of the feeling of protection that the national population has against the spread of the Omicron variant rests on the successful vaccination process that has been developed in the country. But it is worrying that the group of people who have not been vaccinated, and even those who do not have their booster doses, also present high degrees of feeling protected. The official data is definitive in this regard, establishing that vaccination is the main protection tool against contagion so as not to advance in serious cases”, comments Alejandra Ojeda, manager of Public Studies at Ipsos Chile.
Of those surveyed, 70% have already adopted some change to protect themselves from the arrival of the Omicron variant and only 30% have done nothing. Of those who have taken measures, 65% say they are going out to public or commercial spaces less, 60% intensified the use of masks and 56% reduced their social and/or family gatherings.
When asked “what is the figure to which you pay the most attention to determine the severity level of COVID in Chile?”, 46% mentioned the daily number of new infected people, 23% the number of active cases and 14% the daily number of people hospitalized in ICU beds.
“The Ómicron variant has proven to be especially contagious, which is why some experts have called for focusing on the occupation of ICU beds or the number of people who have died as indicators of severity. In this sense, it would be important that official sources on the matter educate the population on how to read the indicators that are disseminated daily and published by the various media. It is important to graduate between the alarm, risk communication and also the conditions that are generating progress towards normality in daily practices”, indicates Ojeda.
Regarding the implementation of a quarantine to stop the advance of Ómicron, 6 out of 10 Chileans (63%) think that it will be necessary to decree a new confinement and 26% believe that it is not necessary to take this measure.
Regarding the implementation of a new dose, 77% of those interviewed believe that it is very likely that the fourth dose will be applied and 11% see it as not at all likely.
Despite the fact that in December the government had its best evaluation regarding the management of the pandemic (47% evaluated it positively), in January it fell again to 36%, with Chileans aged 51 or older giving the greatest support to what carried out by Sebastián Piñera and his team (49%).
