More than 80% of Pinoys stressed due to COVID-19 pandemic

A survey was conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS) to see if how much coronavirus 2019 or Covid-19 is affecting Filipinos.

Photo credit: rappler.com

It was conducted from July 3 to 6 with the results released yesterday showed that the pandemic brought stress to 86% of Filipinos, three points lower than the 89% obtained in a similar survey in May. 51% said the COVID crisis brought them great stress, while 35% said it caused them much stress.

Compared to May, those with great stress fell slightly from 55 percent, while those with much stress hardly change from 34 percent.

Only 14 percent felt little to no stress, which rose slightly from the 11 percent in May.

According to SWS, stress is higher among families that experienced involuntary hunger and joblessness. The survey showed that 62% of those who experienced involuntary hunger in the past three months suffered from great stress, compared to 48% who did not experience it.

Previous survey results showed that 20.9% of families or an estimated 5.2 million experienced involuntary hunger in July, up from 16.7% or 4.2 million families in May.

In terms of employment, 55% of those who do not have a job experienced great stress, compared with 46% of those who have jobs. 

Great stress was highest in Metro Manila and Visayas at 56% followed by Luzon outside Metro Manila at 49% and Mindanao at 46%.

Compared to May, those with great stress declined from 63% in the Visayas and 55% in Mindanao. It hardly changed from 58% in Metro Manila and 51% in the rest of Luzon.

The survey had 1,555 respondents and has an error margin of +/- 2% for national scores. 

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 sub-national representative face-to-face surveys since 2017.