Coronavirus: Majority of Americans don’t expect US to recover from the pandemic until the end of 2021

A majority of Americans don’t think the United States will recover from the coronavirus pandemic until at least the end of 2021, a new poll has found.

Unlike Donald Trump, most Americans do not believe the country has rounded the corner on the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, just 13 per cent believe the country will recover by the end of 2020, based on an exclusive Independent poll commissioned with JL Partners.

Of the 1,002 respondents surveyed between 26 October to 28 October, 46 per cent said they thought the US would recover by the end of 2021 from the pandemic and an additional 17 per cent by the end of 2022. Only 4 per cent of Americans thought the pandemic would last until 2025, and 3 per cent expected it would last beyond 2025.

Almost one in five Americans said they did not know when America might recover from the pandemic, as Covid-19 cases spike in a vast majority of states. 

Americans believing the US could recover from the pandemic by the end of 2021 fits realistically around the timeline health experts are saying based on the coronavirus vaccine schedule.

Top epidemiologist Dr Anothny Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases, said “semblances of normality” wouldn’t likely return until the end of 2021, but it all depended on vaccine development.

“If we get a vaccination campaign, and by the second or third quarter of 2021 we have vaccinated a substantial proportion of the people, I think it will be easily by the end of 2021, and perhaps even into the next year, before we start having some semblances of normality,” Dr Fauci said during a University of Melbourne panel on Wednesday.

This timeline starkly differs from what Mr Trump has told supporters during his campaign rallies in recent days.

The president has claimed the US was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic, but that rhetoric differs greatly from the at least 41 states recording a surge in new coronavirus cases. No states are recording a decline in coronavirus cases.

Hospitalisations are also on the rise in states across the US, and experts have warned a surge in the mortality rate could follow.

Multiple US vaccine trials are in the final phase of human trials, highlighting a potential bright spot amid the grim news related to the pandemic.

Pfizer has indicated it would pursue emergency authorisation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its coronavirus vaccine at the end of November. If approved, the US could start to roll out the vaccine to at-risk populations, but it was unlikely that a vast majority of Americans would receive the treatment until months into creation and distribution of the shot.

How successful these vaccines will be in curbing the spread of the novel virus won’t be known for months into its use.