US voters are more optimistic about Covid now than they were last fall, according to a new NBC News poll.
The results came as President Joe Biden prioritizes the coronavirus pandemic for his first days as the country's newest leader.
However, the survey suggested that many people remain unhappy with the country’s slow vaccine rollout, and most of them blame the federal government.
The findings released Thursday revealed that 38% of registered American voters think that the worst of the Covid-19 crisis is behind the country, while 44% believe that the worst is yet to come. In a survey held shortly before the November election, those numbers were 25% and 55%, respectively.
In his inaugural speech Wednesday, Biden mentioned that the country will tread a difficult path in terms of the pandemic.
“We are entering what may well be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus,” he said.
The US is posting at least 193,600 new Covid infections and at least 3,030 Covid-related deaths each day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using Johns Hopkins University data. New, more infectious Covid strains of the virus have emerged in the country. Almost 406,000 fatalities resulted due to the pandemic that started early last year.
The country did not meet its target of inoculating 20 million people by the end of 2020. Under Donald Trump’s leadership, only 14.2 million people had taken one or more doses of the coronavirus vaccine as of Wednesday morning, according to CDC data.
The NBC poll respondents expressed a more positive outlook about the pandemic. But more than half of the people surveyed were not happy with the distribution of Covid vaccines so far: 30% said vaccine administration has gone poorly, while 25% said it has gone “not too well.”
Additionally, another 11% believe it has been handled “very” well, and 31% think it has gone “fairly” well.
Among the participants who believe the vaccine rollout has been subpar, 64% blamed the federal government, while 21% blamed state governments. Another 11% blamed both equally.
In terms of party lines, among Democratic voters who were frustrated about the vaccine rollout, 79% blamed the federal government. Among Republicans critical of the distribution, 52% blamed states.
The NBC poll queried 1,000 registered American voters nationwide from Jan. 10 to Jan. 13. It consists a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Response to American voters
The Biden administration aims to improve the distribution of vaccines by injecting more funds into local and state officials, setting up more vaccination sites, and implementing a national public education campaign, according to his Covid response plan presented Thursday. Biden previously said that his administration will aim to administer 100 million vaccine shots in its first 100 days.
His appointed health officials are not also happy with the state of the federal vaccine distribution plan.
“What we’re inheriting from the Trump administration is so much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeff Zients, Biden’s coordinator for the Covid response, told reporters. “We have to vaccinate as much of the U.S. population as possible to put this pandemic behind us, but we don’t have the infrastructure," he added.
On his first day in office, Biden brought back the national security team focused on global health, security and biodefense and asked agencies to keep nationwide moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures, and urged the Department of Education to suspend student loan payments and interest.
Biden also issued a mask mandate for people going to a federal building or federal land or using public transportation. Biden introduced a 100-day masking challenge calling on Americans to wear face coverings in public for the next 100 days.
Meanwhile, passing a new Covid relief package appears to be a challenge for the new Congress and White House. Democrats have light majorities in both houses of Congress, and Republicans are hesitant of increased spending.
“We must set aside the politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation,” Biden said Wednesday.
In an analysis published on CNN, Stephen Collinson said that Biden's Covid plan "is in many cases implementing measures that a comprehensive pandemic response from the previous administration would have taken at the start."
"It is rooted in a bet that throwing federal government expertise, money and scale at a crisis can turn the situation around and finally provide the leadership and coordination that has been lacking in the year since the coronavirus struck the US," he added.
