More Americans concerned about hospital resources, testing as COVID-19 cases surge

Americans’ concerns about the health care system’s capacity to treat COVID-19 cases as well as testing spiked in late June after plateauing earlier in the month, according to new polling from Gallup.

The percentage of Americans saying they are either moderately or very worried about access to hospital supplies, treatment or services in their area grew 10 points between June 22 and June 28 to 44 percent.

Availability of coronavirus tests, meanwhile, is now a concern among 39 percent of Americans, a 6-point increase.

Americans concerns’ about supply and treatment availability had dropped nearly by half, from 64 percent in April to 34 percent the week of June 21. Concerns about availability of tests, meanwhile, had fallen from 60 percent in April to 33 percent in mid-June before last week’s spike.

The overall increase is largely driven by spikes in concern among Democrats, younger Americans and women.

Concerns among men about tests are up slightly from last week, rising from 29 percent to 33 percent, while the percentage of women concerned about testing rose from 37 percent to 44 percent in the same period.

Concern about testing availability increased in the last week among both those ages 30 to 49, from 36 percent to 40 percent, and those ages 50 to 64, from 23 percent to 36 percent. Meanwhile, concern declined slightly among those ages 18 to 29, from 50 percent to 48 percent, and was statistically the same among those 65 and over, going from 33 percent to 34 percent in the past week.

When the results are broken down by party, 63 percent of Democrats are very or moderately concerned about hospital supplies, services or treatments in their area, compared to 16 percent of Republicans. The gap in concern between whites and nonwhites, meanwhile, has fallen to under 10 points, according to Gallup.

Gallup polled a random sample of 3,454 adults from June 22 to June 28. Its results have a margin of error of 3 percentage points for individual samples, with higher margins of error for subgroups.