Americans trust health agencies more than Trump on virus protection: poll

More Americans trust major health agencies and organizations to keep the country safe during the coronavirus pandemic than President Trump, a new poll reveals.

In the Axios-SurveyMonkey poll, 75 percent of surveyed American adults said that they trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 68 percent trust the National Institutes of Health and state health departments, 67 percent trust local emergency management offices, and 66 percent trust the World Health Organization.

Fewer than half — 42 percent — said that they trust Trump to protect the U.S. from a major outbreak. The results were largely skewed along party lines, with 84 percent of Republicans saying they trust Trump over all of the health agencies.

Almost 80 percent of all respondents also said that they are following news coverage of the virus closely. Notably, respondents who don’t get their news from a major news source have less faith in the various leading health agencies and organizations.

A margin of error for the poll, conducted March 9-10, was not listed, though the survey data was “weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States.”

There are now more than 4,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., with at least 85 deaths reported.