This March 13 marks two years since the detection of the first four cases of covid-19 in Uruguay and the conference in which President Luis Lacalle Pou, a few days after taking office, announced the first restrictions on mobility to contain to the virus.
Since then, the health emergency has been in force, still in force. In this period, 863,365 positive cases were detected and 7,090 people died with a diagnosis of the disease that turned the world upside down.
But in that period, the management of the pandemic became –by far– the area of greatest government approval, and to this day seven out of ten Uruguayans believe that the Lacalle Pou administration steered the health crisis satisfactorily.
In addition, two years after the first cases 72% of the population believe that “the worst” of the pandemic is over, according to a survey by the consulting firm Equipos. The remaining percentage is divided between those who believe that this is the “worst moment” (7%), those who believe that the worst is yet to come (12%) and those who do not know or do not answer (9%).
Despite this, when consulting on the degree of return to activities, the area that is closest to normality is the workplace. 55% say they have returned totally or mostly. In the case of family activities it falls to 50% and to total reunion with friends, 39%.
These results are conditioned by the age of the respondents. They are the youngest, between 18 and 49 years old, who have returned to full activities to a greater extent. Those between 18 and 29 years old did so by 55%, while those between 30 and 49 did so by 56%. The figure falls among adults 50 to 64 years old and 65 years or older with 48% and 35%, respectively.
Wide satisfaction in handling the pandemic: 72% approve
The vast majority of the 505 surveyed by Equipos approved of the handling of the pandemic in Uruguay. 38% understand that the country handled the pandemic “very well” and 34% that it did “well”.
18% believe that it was “neither good nor bad” and 8%, bad. Among them, 5% believe it was wrong and 3% very wrong.
The survey was conducted between February 22 and March 1 of this year by telephone. It has a maximum margin of error of 4.3% with a confidence interval of 95%. Sample adjustments were made for previous vote, region, educational level, age, sex and occupation status of the respondents.
