A special survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed three out of five Filipinos believe China held back information on COVID-19 from the world.
The survey, conducted from July 3 to 6 and involving 1,555 respondents, asked: “How much do you believe the accusation of other countries that China did not immediately share their information on COVID-19 to the world, such as the severity of the disease and the number of deaths in China because of this virus?”
SWS said that 61 percent of the respondents "strongly believe" the accusation, while only 23 percent said "they do not believe" the same. 15 percent were undecided.
This gives a Net Belief score (percentage of those who believe minus percentage of those who do not believe, correctly rounded) of +38, classified by SWS as "very strong" .
The Net Belief score was "very strong" in all areas of the country.
The highest is in the Visayas at +43, followed by Metro Manila at +41, Mindanao at +38, and Balance Luzon at +35.
The survey also showed seven out of 10 or 77 % of those who believe the accusation say “China should be held accountable for not immediately sharing their information on COVID-19 to the world.”
This is the sum of 50 percent who strongly agree and 26 percent who somewhat agree, correctly rounded.
Meanwhile, 15 percent disagreed (8 percent somewhat disagree plus 7 percent strongly disagree) and 7 percent were undecided.
This gives a Net Agreement score of +62 (correctly rounded) classified by SWS as "extremely strong."
Net Agreement that China should be held accountable for the alleged non-disclosure was higher in Balance Luzon at +66, the Visayas at +65, and Metro Manila at +64, compared to Mindanao at +50.
The survey was sponsored by the Stratbase Albert Del Rosario (ADR) Institute. It was presented to the public by the SWS on July 14 in a virtual conference organized by the institute dubbed “A New Regional Order: Effective Alignment through Strategic Partnerships."
Data were gathered through mobile phone interviews of adult Filipinos 18 years old and above, randomly drawn from a database of mobile phone numbers compiled from SWS national and subnational representative face-to-face surveys since 2017.
SWS noted sampling error margins of ±2% for national percentages, ±6% for Metro Manila, and ±5 for Balance Luzon, ±5% Visayas, and ±5% in Mindanao.