KARACHI: As many as 73 percent respondents of Gallup Pakistan Survey have strongly approved of the government’s management of COVID-19 pandemic, which is 21 percent higher than the global average of people expressing satisfaction with their respective government’s handling of the pandemic. The average global positive response to respective country’s handling of the health crisis is 52 per cent and comparing that to 73 percent approval rating from Pakistanis which is over 21 percent. Besides, within 32 countries that have expressed satisfaction with their government’s management of coronavirus infection, Pakistan comes on 8th position. This was revealed in survey conducted across 32 countries. In Pakistan the opinion survey was performed by Gallup Pakistan.
The survey company solicited opinion from 1000 people across the country from Oct 21 to Dec 15 2020. According to the survey every 7 out of 10 respondents, ie 73 percent respondents favoured government’s handling of the severe health crisis. Whereas 23 percent Pakistanis did not like the way the pandemic was handled by the PTI government and four per cent respondents did not reply to the query.
According to Gallup Pakistan, the satisfactory response peaked during March 2020 and once again from Oct-Dec 2020. In March 60 percent respondents expressed satisfaction which shot up to 82 percent in April, but came down to 67 percent in June, went up a little bit by 69 percent in Aug, recorded 70 percent in September and rose to 73 per cent between Oct-Dec 2020.
In India, 87 per cent nationals favoured the Modi government’s response to the pandemic, while 13 per cent found it to be bad handling. When the response of the Pakistanis was compared to that of 32 other countries, globally 52 percent population had expressed positive opinion about their respective government’s management of the Covid-19. As many as 45 per cent expressed pessimism over their government’s handling of the issue.
Among the countries most satisfied with their government’s handling of the health crisis, Pakistan stood at 8th position, while Vietnam stood first with 99.8 percent positive response, China became second with 99.1 percent approval rating, India was third with 87 percent per cent, South Korea was fourth with 82.1 percent, Finland was fifth with 78.6 percent, Malaysia on sixth position with 75.5 per cent, Canada secured seventh position with 74.9 per cent approval rating, Indonesia was ninth with 71.3 per cent and Germany came on 10th position with 63.1 percent approval rating for Berlin’s handling of the severe health crisis.