Despite Omicron Variant Spread, Trump Voters Oppose 'Encouraging' Vaccination

Supporters of former president Donald Trump in a survey said they are opposing officials who encourage COVID-19 vaccinations even as the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreads rapidly across the United States.

In the Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted from Dec. 9 to 13, 48% of Trump voters said they refuse to encourage inoculation in response to the heavily mutated Omicron variant.

In comparison, only 35% opposed encouraging people in their area to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in a September poll.

The new poll also found that the number of Trump voters supporting vaccinations fell down to 41% in December from 54% in September. Among the Republican voters surveyed, 45% were in favor of vaccinations while 43% opposed.

In contrast, 85% of Democratic voters and 59% of Independent voters said they support encouraging COVID-19 vaccinations in response to the Omicron variant.

Overall, 60% of the survey’s 1,558 participants said they favored encouraging people to get inoculated against the virus.

The Omicron variant was first discovered in South Africa in November. Since then, it has spread across 57 countries, including the U.S. where it makes up 3% of all cases sequenced, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed.

Last week, the Omicron variant was only found in 0.4% of samples sequenced.

More than two dozen states reported Omicron COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday, with California being the first to confirm a case caused by the new variant. It is currently unclear when the Omicron variant first arrived in the U.S.

The CDC is now warning that the Omicron variant may bring about another wave of infections as soon as in January, coupled with another surge of Delta and influenza cases, one model showed.

Another model outlined a less severe scenario, with only a smaller number of Omicron cases surging in the spring.

“They’re considering the information at the highest levels right now, and thinking through how to get the public to understand what the scenarios mean,” one federal health official familiar with a CDC briefing told The Washington Post. “The implications of a big wave in January that could swamp hospitals … we need to take that potential seriously,” the official added.