Poll: Most Americans say efforts to combat coronavirus ‘going badly’

Most Americans say they believe coronavirus prevention efforts in the U.S. are having little effect in slowing the spread of the virus, with a large majority saying they expect it to take months to contain the disease, according to a new poll.

A CBS News poll released Tuesday found that 57 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said that efforts to fight the virus are “going badly,” with 72 percent saying they think it will take months or longer to contain the virus while a quarter said it could be contained within a few weeks.

President Trump’s handling of the situation, however, is still supported by a majority of Americans in the poll, 53 percent.

When it comes to public trust, both the president and the national news media suffer, with 44 percent and 43 percent of respondents saying they believe the president and the news media, respectively.

Republicans responding to the poll indicated a high level of trust in the president for dispensing accurate advice, with 90 percent saying they trust Trump for accurate information compared to 84 percent who said the same of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Support for Congress’s plan to send stimulus checks to middle- and lower-income Americans is widely supported across party lines, the poll found, with 85 percent of respondents supporting such a plan.

The poll was conducted March 21-23 among 2,190 U.S. adults. The margin of error is 2.3 percentage points.