- About 10% fewer Americans said they were avoiding small groups than they did when the same question was asked in March, according to a new Gallup poll.
- The majority of states around the US have begun reopening businesses but still require patrons to practice
social distancing . - The largest drops among those who said they were avoiding small groups came from Republicans followed by Independents.
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About 10% fewer Americans said they had avoided small gatherings in the past week compared to the end of March, according to a Gallup poll released Monday, indicating that social distancing is becoming less common as states relax stay-at-home orders.
Nearly three out of four Americans surveyed — 74% — said that they had avoided small gatherings in the past week, marking a fall in the number from a peak of 84% when the question was asked at the end of March. Though more Americans are apparently open to gatherings, three-quarters of people polled by Gallup said they were wearing masks when they traveled outside their home.
The social distancing decline was notably the steepest among Republican respondents.
At the end of March, 90% of Democrats, 84% of Independents, and 76% of Republicans had said they avoided small gatherings in the previous week, according to Gallup. In the latest survey, 86% of Democrats said they avoided small gatherings compared to 74% of Independents and 60% of Republicans. That's a 16-point decrease among Republicans compared to a 10-point drop among Independents and a four-point drop among Democrats.
The poll comes as states at the end of April began to relax stay-at-home orders that closed non-essential businesses and asked residents to limit non-essential travel. In Georgia, which ones one of many states to end its stay-at-home order last week, more than 60,000 people flocked in from neighboring states to visit re-opened establishments, according to researchers from the University of Maryland.
Experts have warned that hastily relaxing social distancing will result in an increase in COVID-19 infections.
About one in six people — 16% — surveyed by Gallup said they had visited someone else's home in the past 24 hours, according to the poll that surveyed some 4,553 adults in the US and was conducted from April 27 to May 3, 2020. In other surveys conducted since March, the number hovered between 11% and 13%.
According to Gallup, the latest data is most similar to public opinion polling that occurred at the outset of the pandemic in the US, where a similar number of people said they were avoiding public transit and public places but continued to interact in small groups.
According to data analyzed by Johns Hopkins University, more than 1.3 million people in the US have contracted the disease caused by the novel