Unfavourable views on China reach historic highs among other countries, but when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, most people rate America as the country with the worst response to the virus.
A new 14 country survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 84 percent of respondents thought the U.S. had handled the COVID 19 outbreak poorly, compared to the 15 percent who thought the nation had done a good job.
The response from China was also negative, but ranked better than that of the U.S.: 61 percent said the country had done a bad job and 37 percent said it had done a good job.
The EU and the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic was rated positively, with 60 percent and 63 percent of respondents respectively saying that each of the two countries had done a good job in dealing with the coronavirus.
After the first cases of the virus appeared in Wuhan at the end of last year, many questioned China’s response and criticized that it had not succeeded in containing the outbreak.
China received particularly negative criticism for its COVID 19 response from Japan, South Korea and Australia, where more than 73 percent of participants said China had done a bad job.
However, the unfavorable evaluations for the USA were strikingly bad in all areas.
More than eight out of ten in all 14 countries surveyed said that the US had done a bad job in fighting the outbreak. Ratings were particularly low in South Korea and Denmark, where 93 percent and 92 percent of respondents, respectively, considered the US response to the virus to be poor.
Conflicting recommendations from the Trump administration and health authorities have divided the U.S. handling of the Coronavrius.
While states with Democratic governors were among the first to issue house arrest orders and mask mandates, states led by Republican governors chose not to implement nationwide requirements.
The United States is the only country in the world with more than 10 million confirmed cases of coronavirus.
By December 4, the country reported more than 14 million COVID-19 cases and over 277,000 deaths, according to a tracker at Johns Hopkins University.
India has the second highest number of confirmed cases, followed by Brazil, Russia and France.
China, on the other hand, has reported only 93,333 cases of coronavirus, putting it in 70th place on the list of countries with the highest number of infections. The strict lockdown of the country is now over and the number of new cases has dropped to around zero by May.
However, negative views about China have developed more strongly than before.
The survey revealed that 74 percent of Americans see China in a negative light.
Since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the unfavorable views about China in the United States have increased by almost 20 percentage points – an increase of 13 points since last year alone.
