About 48 per cent of Canadians visited with family or friends outside their home over the holidays, according to a new poll released Tuesday.
The Leger web poll, which included a sample of 1,506 Canadians and 1,003 Americans, found that of the Canadians surveyed, 52 per cent said they did not visit with anyone outside their household over the holidays, 34 per cent said they did no more than once, 12 per cent said they socialized with people outside their home two or three times, and two per cent said they did more than three times.
In an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, the federal government and the premiers of some provinces, including Ontario, urged people only to gather with members of their own household over the holidays.
Of the respondents who said they did not visit with anyone outside their household, 50 per cent said they knew someone who did and 48 per cent said they did not.
The poll, which was conducted between Dec. 30 and Jan. 3., also found that 62 per cent of the Canadian respondents are not confident that Canada will be able to limit the spread of COVID-19 over the next few weeks.
Close to 10,000 new cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus were recorded in the country on Monday.
The poll also appears to suggest that there is less vaccine hesitancy among Canadians than Americans.
More than 70 per cent of the Canadians polled said they plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine compared to just 53 per cent of the Americans surveyed.
About 62 per cent of Canadian respondents said they are satisfied with the measures the federal government has put in place to fight COVID-19.
Online polls cannot be assigned a margin of error but a traditional poll with a sample size of 1,506 would have a margin of error of 2.53 per cent 19 times out of 20, and a sample size of 1,003 would have a margin of error of 3.09 per cent.
