As lots of you will be aware we have been running a daily Pulse survey in collaboration with Research Opinions, collecting data on how the mood of our representative sample is changing as the days go by and new information is received in relation to the Covid 19 pandemic.
Unsurprisingly our results showed that peoples greatest concerns involved the impact on our NHS and the current fear for high risk groups. The lack of an end date is quite obviously something we as a nation are struggling with, most of us having never experienced such a shake up of this magnitude before.
99% of the people we surveyed are keeping up to date with the Prime Ministers daily conference, either reading or watching the announcements live and in a very close split 55% are confident in the response from Boris Johnsons and peers with the remaining 45% not quite as optimistic.
Following on from this weekend’s display of lack of social distancing in lots of parks and open spaces, the next stat shows why some of the guidelines set out may not be being adhered to – 32% of the people we surveyed do not feel that the communication about what they personally need to do has been clear enough. We hope this is cleared up over the next few days in the effort to flatten the curve.
Our survey results show that, thankfully, it seems to be just the few that are panic buying and stockpiling whilst many have not changed their shopping behaviour at all. Long life products appear to be the flavour of the month with 38% of people buying more tinned food, 29% heading for the frozen section and 26% buying more dried pasta, rice or grains – possibly in a knee jerk reaction to such items already flying off the shelves.
Items that would’ve been in our baskets monthly, if not less are now appearing with each visit to the supermarket. 22% of the people we spoke to are buying more cleaning products, 25% more hand sanitiser and soap and we also surveyed people who were buying more medication than they would usually. Again, this poses the question as to whether this is in response to rumours of possible shortages of medical kit must haves like paracetomol and the tales of ibruprofen being hailed as a Coronavirus wonder drug.
We’ll be running our Pulse surveys daily and would like to thank everyone who has taken part so far, please keep an eye out for our results round ups on the blog and on our social media pages.
