As the anniversary of President Biden’s inauguration approaches this week, American opinion of his efforts to contain the pandemic is lower than ever, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll.

The poll, released on Sunday, found just 36 per cent of respondents believed US efforts to deal with the coronavirus was “going well”. Just 49 per cent of Americans approved of the P resident’s management of the pandemic, compared to 66 percent of Americans who gave the same response in July, in a previous version of the poll.

Seventy-eight per cent of those who approved of the president’s handling of the pandemic identified as liberal, and 83 per cent who disapproved identified as conservative.

The President’s first year in office included widespread distribution of coronavirus vaccines, the rise of the aggressive Delta variant and, most recently, the record-breaking surge of Omicron overwhelming hospitals across the country.

The federal government faced a significant setback in its efforts to curb the spread of the virus when the Supreme Court rejected a vaccine-or-testing mandate for private employers that would have affected more than 80 million workers. But the court allowed a more limited mandate that requires health care workers at facilities that receive federal money to be vaccinated.

The poll, of 2,094 adult respondents surveyed between Jan. 12 to 14, found that 35 per cent of Americans believed the administration’s policies were improving the pandemic, compared to 40 per cent who believed the policies made the situation worse.

Among the respondents who believed Biden’s policies improved the pandemic, 61 per cent identified as liberal; among the respondents who said Biden’s policies made the pandemic worse, 68 per cent identified as conservative.

While new cases seem to be peaking in New York and some other northeastern states, they remain extremely high there.

(New York Times News Service)